Saturn will reach the end of its retrograde motion, ending its westward movement through the constellations and returning to more usual eastward motion instead. This reversal of direction is a phenomenon that all the solar system's outer planets periodically undergo, a few months after they pass opposition.
The retrograde motion is caused by the Earth's own motion around the Sun. As the Earth circles the Sun, our perspective changes, and this causes the apparent positions of objects to move from side-to-side in the sky with a one-year period. This nodding motion is super-imposed on the planet's long-term eastward motion through the constellations.
The diagram below illustrates this. The grey dashed arrow shows the Earth's sight-line to the planet, and the diagram on the right shows the planet's apparently movement across the sky as seen from the Earth:
The retrograde motion of a planet in the outer solar system.
Not drawn to scale.
Observing Saturn
Saturn leaves retrograde motion as its 2006–2007 apparition comes to an end, although it will remain visible for some weeks in the dusk sky.
As retrograde motion ends, it will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 19:54 (PST), 71° above your south-eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then reach its highest point in the sky at 20:24, 72° above your southern horizon. It will continue to be observable until around 02:19, when it sinks below 10° above your western horizon.
Over the following weeks, Saturn will reach its highest point in the sky four minutes earlier each night, gradually disappearing into evening twilight.
As it leaves retrograde motion, its celestial coordinates will be:
| Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
| Saturn | 09h23m30s | 16°40'N | Leo | 0.1 | 18.8" |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.
The sky on 1 Jan 2026
| The sky on 1 January 2026 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
98% 13 days old |
All times shown in PST.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Source
The circumstances of this event were computed using the DE430 planetary ephemeris published by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
This event was automatically generated by searching the ephemeris for planetary alignments which are of interest to amateur astronomers, and the text above was generated based on an estimate of your location.
Related news
| 19 Apr 2007 | – Saturn ends retrograde motion |
| 19 Dec 2007 | – Saturn enters retrograde motion |
| 24 Feb 2008 | – Saturn at opposition |
| 02 May 2008 | – Saturn ends retrograde motion |
Image credit
© NASA/Cassini