dipper@utastro.UUCP (Debbie Byrd) (11/22/85)
The planet Saturn is on the far side of the sun from Earth today. More -- in a moment. November 22 Saturn's Conjunction Saturn is the sixth planet out from the sun. It's the farthest planet that's always visible to the naked eye. But we can't see Saturn right now -- because the sun is between us and it. Saturn is at conjunction with the sun today -- located beyond the sun from the Earth. If you were looking down on the solar system from above, you'd see Saturn, the sun and the Earth in a straight line, with the sun in the middle. Because Saturn orbits farther from the sun than Earth, it takes longer to move once around its mother star -- about thirty years, measured in earthly time. Until today Saturn was falling behind the Earth in the race of the planets. Now Saturn is so far behind that it's halfway across the solar system from us. After today, the Earth -- always in a hurry compared with the outer planets -- will start gaining on Saturn again in orbit around the sun. We'll catch up -- and race between the sun and Saturn -- in May. Then the planet will be very bright -- and in our sky all night long. So Saturn is behind the sun now -- but in a few weeks the planet will move up and out of the sun's glare -- to become visible in our eastern sky shortly before sunrise. It'll emerge into the dawn sky in the company of elusive Mercury -- and the two worlds will be pretty high up in the east before dawn just before Christmas. Script by Diana Hadley and Deborah Byrd. (c) Copyright 1984, 1985 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin