Great Views Of Saturn

rehannan writes "Saturn is now a mere 750 million miles from earth; the closest point in it's 30-year orbit. Saturn's rings are facing earth this time around, which should make for some pretty good views. For more details, check out Space.com or the CNN article."

Comments

close isn't that much closer

[bcrowell]

For Saturn, close isn't really that much closer than any other time. Saturn's orbit has a radius about 10 times Earth's, so the shortest distance between Earth and Saturn is only about 10% shorter than average.

Now what's really going to be cool is Mars's opposition coming up in August, which is going to be the closest in thousands of years.

I have a little planetarium applet that lets you play around and look at this kind of stuff.