Look for! Saturn lights up, showing the rings when it reaches opposition.

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Get ready for the annual Saturn show in the night sky!

Starting on Monday (August 2), you can find Saturn shining in the sky as part of a celestial phenomenon called Opposition. Earth and the ring planet will be on the same side from the sun and connected to our star by an invisible line, allowing sky watchers on Earth to see fully lit Saturn. Saturn reaches this brightest point around 2 a.m. EDT (0600 GMT) on Monday, according to EarthSky.org. It will be highest in the sky around midnight local time and is located in the constellation Capricorn.

Sky watchers will be able to discover many gems, the most conspicuous of which are the rings of Saturn. This year, Saturn’s northern hemisphere will tilt toward us at an angle that allows for a nice look at Saturn’s 18-degree tilted rings with respect to Earth, according to In-The-sky.org. The angle should also allow sunlight to reflect off the ice rings to illuminate them from our perspective.

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On Monday (August 2), Saturn will face opposition among Capricorn’s central stars. In opposition, Saturn will be 830.6 million miles (1.337 billion km) from Earth, and will shine as bright as 0.18 – its brightest for 2021. (Image source: Starry Night)

Viewers can also see Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. “With a small telescope, Titan is actually pretty handy,” astronomer Phil Plait told NPR. He said, “If you take a look, you might see a little star right next to Saturn. It might be Titan – you can go online and find a planetarium program” to confirm that.

Carlos Blanco, a Princeton University particle physicist and enthusiastic sky observer, told Space.com that he recommends viewing Saturn with a telescope that offers a narrow field of view and high magnification.

“In the sky, the planets are unique in that they are relatively bright but almost point-like, unlike the moon or the Andromeda galaxy, which extend several degrees into the sky,” he said.

“So, to take a closer look at them, you have to have a scope so that the image you see in the viewfinder is about the size of the planet. In other words, the circle that the viewer makes in the sky has to be very narrow around that point of light.” Roughly speaking, the higher the magnification of the telescope, the lower the field of view, and vice versa.

Blanco recommends an 8-inch Dobsonian telescope; Check out Space.com’s list of this year’s best telescopes for recommendations.

Night sky looking south from New York City at about 2:00 a.m. local time, when Saturn reaches opposition. This image was created by Dominic Ford of In-the-sky.org. (Photo credit: Dominic Ford / In-the-sky.org)

Don’t worry if you can’t locate the telescope in time, because Saturn is one of the most distant objects people can see in the sky with the naked eye. As a rule, Plait recommends finding the brightest point in the night sky (after Venus has gone away, that is – this planet is easy to recognize because it shines in the sky after sunset or before sunrise). That bright spot is Jupiter, he told NPR, and Saturn will be the next brightest point in the sky, west of Jupiter.

Understanding how opposition works will also help. Opposition occurs when a planet appears opposite the Sun in Earth’s sky. In this case, Saturn will climb high in the northern hemisphere night sky because it is opposite the sun high in the sky on the day side.

Follow Doris Ellen Urrutia on Twitter @salazar_elin. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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