The moon and Saturn will once again engage in a cosmic ballet this Tuesday evening, with the ringed planet shining like a bright yellowish-white "star" passing just to the left and slightly below the almost-full moon.
The moon will seem to move toward Saturn throughout the hours of darkness, approaching to within 2.5 degrees near dawn. A closed fist if held at an arm's length would cover around 10 degrees of sky.
During this month, Saturn is closer to the Earth than it will be at any other time this year. Although it will be only 830 million miles away, its rings will not be apparent to the naked eye and it will appear as a bright star-like bright dot.
For most of the month, a small telescope of 30x magnification will provide an excellent view of the planet's rings, currently tipped up from edge by 21.4 degrees, astronomers say.
That angle will increase, providing ever-more impressive views, until it reaches nearly 27 degrees in 2017.
The planet will shine with a magnitude of zero on the brightness scale, matching the bright star Arcturus that will be visible high above Saturn in the sky.
While sky watchers in the Northern Hemisphere will see the moon and Saturn close together, observers in southern Australia and New Zealand will see the moon actually pass in front of Saturn, a phenomenon known as an occultation.
Saturn, the second-largest planet in the solar system after Jupiter, is a gas giant made mostly of hydrogen and helium with a radius around nine times that of the Earth and 95 times as massive.
Scientists say the planet is not completely gaseous, with intense pressure at its center creating a rocky core consisting mostly of iron, nickel and silicon rocks.
As the only planet with an overall density less than that of water, it would float in a bathtub, if one could be envisioned big enough to hold it.
The farthest planet in the solar system that can be seen by the naked eye, it takes 29.7 Earth years to make one orbit around the sun.
In addition to its signature rings, Saturn has a cohort of many moons. With 62 moons at last count, the planet also has the solar system's largest moon Titan, which is bigger than the planet Mercury.
