Saturn will temporarily lose its iconic look from our viewpoint on Earth, appearing as a pale, yellow sphere without its swirling rings shrouding the gas giant.
The billions of rocky and icy chunks swirling around Saturn will disappear from our viewpoint on Sunday, March 23 as the thin edges of the planet’s rings are aimed toward Earth, seemingly vanishing from sight. The rare phenomenon occurs every 13 to 15 years, with Earth passing through Saturn’s ring plane. The last time Earth got this rare view of the gas giant was in 2009.
Saturn is surrounded by billions of swarming pieces of comets, asteroids, and broken-off fragments of moons that were caught by the planet’s orbit. The exquisite ring system extends up to 175,000 miles (282,000 kilometers) from the planet, and is made up of tiny, dust-sized icy grains to chunks as big as a house, according to NASA.
Similarly to Earth, Saturn’s axis is tilted by 26.73 degrees. As it orbits the Sun, Saturn’s tilt shifts in relation to Earth, causing its rings to disappear from our view as our planet crosses their plane. When Saturn is tilted toward Earth, we can see the upper side of its rings, and we see the lower side of the rings when the planet is tilted toward us. Between these two phases, however, is when the rings vanish from our view. Using a powerful telescope, one could spot a very thin line going around the middle of Saturn.
The plane crossing will begin at around 12:04 p.m. ET on Sunday, according to in-the-sky.org. Saturn’s rings won’t come into full view from Earth for a few months, and we may not get to see them again until November, according to earth.com.
Skywatchers in mid-southern latitudes will have the best chance at spotting the naked Saturn, if they can spot it from the morning twilight shining over the eastern horizon, according to space.com. Those in mid-northern latitudes, however, will have a hard time seeing Saturn as the planet will be close to the Sun at pre-dawn and below the slanted morning ecliptic.
Although it’s not ideal sky watching conditions for most, the celestial phenomenon is a rare glimpse of how the planets move around our shared star.