{"id":77853,"date":"2025-09-22T00:03:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T00:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/77853\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T00:03:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T00:03:07","slug":"the-sky-today-on-sunday-september-21-saturn-at-opposition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/77853\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sky Today on Sunday, September 21: Saturn at opposition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\tBack to Article List\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\tThe ringed planet reaches opposition in Pisces today, offering stunning telescopic views from roughly sunset to sunrise and best around local midnight.\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"620\" height=\"512\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/SaturnOpposition.png\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-post-image\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tSaturn is the brightest point of light high in the southeastern sky around local midnight. Credit: Stellarium\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Saturn reached opposition at 2 A.M. EDT, exhibiting high visibility throughout the night and presenting optimal viewing conditions for its rings and moons.<\/li>\n<li>Saturn&#8217;s apparent magnitude was 0.6 in Pisces, near the Circlet asterism, with a telescopic disk size of 19\u201d and rings spanning 44\u201d.  The rings&#8217; tilt (1.7\u00b0) resulted in an almost edge-on perspective.<\/li>\n<li>Observations of Saturn&#8217;s moons were possible, including Titan (2\u2019 west of Saturn), Rhea (1\u2019 east), and Dione (approximately 1\u2019 west). Tethys underwent an occultation behind Saturn around 2:45 A.M. EDT.<\/li>\n<li>Neptune, situated 2.6\u00b0 from Saturn, was approaching its own opposition on the 23rd.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Saturn reaches opposition at 2 A.M. EDT, visible all night and offering stunning views of its rings and moons. The ringed planet now rises around sunset and is highest around local midnight, when it stands around 45\u00b0 high in the south. But you can easily observe beginning around an hour or two after sunset and until an hour or two before sunrise.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Saturn shines at magnitude 0.6 in Pisces, just southeast of the Circlet asterism. Through a telescope, the planet\u2019s disk stretches 19\u201d and its rings reach 44\u201d from end to end. They are tilted at just 1.7\u00b0 to our line of sight and look nearly edge-on, their shadow on the planet\u2019s cloud tops all but invisible.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Saturn\u2019s largest, brightest moon is Titan, which tonight lies about 2\u2019 west of the planet after crossing the disk yesterday morning. Smaller moons, such as 10th-magnitude Tethys, Rhea, and Dione, are also generally visible. Tonight, Rhea is alone some 1\u2019 east of Saturn, while Dione is nearly the same distance to the planet\u2019s west. Tethys is closing in on Saturn\u2019s southwestern limb from the west early in the evening, then disappears behind the planet in an occultation around 2:45 A.M. EDT on the 22nd (still late on the 21st for the West Coast).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Some 2.6\u00b0 from Saturn is distant Neptune, which we\u2019ll visit in just a few days when the ice giant reaches opposition on the 23rd.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sunrise:<\/strong>\u00a06:47 A.M.<br \/><strong>Sunset:<\/strong>\u00a06:58 P.M.<br \/><strong>Moonrise:<\/strong>\u00a06:33 A.M.<br \/><strong>Moonset:<\/strong>\u00a06:52 P.M.<br \/><strong>Moon Phase:<\/strong>\u00a0New<br \/>*Times for sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset are given in local time from 40\u00b0 N 90\u00b0 W. The Moon\u2019s illumination is given at 12 P.M. local time from the same location.<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">For a look ahead at more upcoming sky events, check out our full\u00a0<a style=\"box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 87, 138); transition-duration: 0.04s; max-width: none;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.astronomy.com\/tags\/sky-this-week\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sky This Week<\/a>\u00a0column.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back to Article List The ringed planet reaches opposition in Pisces today, offering stunning telescopic views from roughly&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[270],"tags":[18,19,17,2209,133,2210,451],"class_list":{"0":"post-77853","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-observing","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-sky-today","14":"tag-space"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}