Saturn's 29.5-year orbit around the Sun will carry it to its closest point to the Sun – its perihelion – at a distance of 9.02 AU.
In practice, however, Saturn's orbit is very close to circular; its distance from the Sun only varies by about 11.5% between perihelion and aphelion. This means that the difference in the amount of heat and light it receives from the Sun between aphelion and perihelion is extremely small.
Finding Saturn
Saturn's distance from the Sun doesn't affect its appearance. From San Diego, at the moment of perihelion it will be visible in the evening sky, becoming accessible around 17:17 (PDT), 31° above your eastern horizon, as dusk fades to darkness. It will then reach its highest point in the sky at 21:42, 79° above your southern horizon. It will continue to be observable until around 03:56, when it sinks below 8° above your western horizon.
A chart of the path of Saturn across the sky in 2239 can be found here, and a chart of its rising and setting times here.
The position of Saturn at the moment it passes perihelion will be:
Object | Right Ascension | Declination | Constellation | Magnitude | Angular Size |
Saturn | 05h57m40s | 22°28'N | Orion | -0.4 | 20.4" |
The coordinates above are given in J2000.0.
The sky on 29 Mar 2024
The sky on 29 March 2024 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
81% 19 days old |
All times shown in PDT.
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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.
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04 Nov 2239 | – Saturn enters retrograde motion |
09 Jan 2240 | – Saturn at opposition |
Image credit
© NASA/Cassini