Saturn the ringed planet can be seen high in the SE just after dusk and remains wellplaced for viewing till about 2 am. Look for it 56 degrees high in the south by 9 pm EDT at midmonth. Saturn will then be magnitude 0.8 with an apparent diameter of 18 arcseconds. The rings will be 40 arc-seconds across with a tilt of only 4 degrees to our lineofsight. The Sun crossed Saturn's ring plane in early March, moving from south to north. Since the south side of the rings is still tilted slightly to our view here on Earth, the rings will become much darker than they have been lately. We will see them only by sunlight scattered through the rings.
Because the rings are so close to edgeon right now, we can see transits of Saturn's many moons and their shadows across the disc of Saturn. The largest moon, Titan, will have its shadow transit on May 15th, beginning at 1:30 am EDT and again on the 31st, beginning at 12:30 am. Titan's shadow will look like a black dot crossing Saturn. Titan itself will pass just to the north of Saturn.
The Cassini spacecraft continues its observation of Saturn and its many moons and rings. For the latest images from Cassini, see:
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm
For detailed postions of Saturn's Moons try this interactive javascript utility. |