The clouds hid the view, but Saturn reached it closest point to earth in 2015 on Friday night and will be easy to see through the month of June.
Saturn rises in the southeast and reaches its highest point after midnight. If it’s cloudy where you in San Diego, head inland where the forecast is for clear night skies beginning Tuesday.
The planet’s majestic rings are tilted so as to make them especially visible, and you can see them with a small telescope.
Saturn is still over 800 million miles away, but the earth now lies between Saturn and the sun, the point astronomers call “opposition.” This is the closest the earth gets to an outer planet every year.
There’s currently one spacecraft orbiting Saturn. NASA’s Cassini mission, named for an Italian astronomer, arrived in 2004 and remains in operation.
What are those other bright objects in the sky? Jupiter is visible high in the southwest, and Venus is low in the west in the early evening.
