Through binoculars, Saturn can look elongated or oval-shaped because of its rings. By late June it rises around midnight in many locations, for example, and by late August it reaches the sky watching sweet spot: it rises at sunset and stays up all night. And as summer progresses, the planet rises earlier and gets higher in the sky at a more reasonable time. If you’d prefer to avoid a predawn viewing, in this case, waiting is fine, too: Saturn’s rings and moons aren’t going to vanish (on human timescales anyway). Jupiter is closer to the eastern horizon (down and to the left of Saturn, for Northern Hemisphere observers), but it’s 15 times brighter and much easier to spot. Don’t confuse it with the nearby star Fomalhaut, which is closer to the horizon than Saturn and has almost exactly the same brightness.
If you get up shortly before dawn, it’ll be about 25 degrees above the horizon, or roughly 2.5 times the width of your outstretched fist-a universal unit of measure among astronomers. Saturn currently crests the horizon early in the morning local time and about an hour later rises high enough to spot low in the southeastern sky. New research indicates its rings are relatively young, cosmically speaking, and astronomers have also just announced the discovery of a whole passel of tiny Saturnian satellites that make the planet the current record holder for the greatest number of moons. If you’re an early riser (or a late partier), then now is a decent time to look for Saturn, not because it’s brighter or closer to Earth than usual but because it’s made some news recently. It’s the faintest of the naked-eye planets-technically Uranus is sometimes bright enough to see, though you need good eyesight and a very dark site-but still fairly easy to pick out among the stars. Saturn is the jewel of the solar system, with its magnificent rings and retinue of weird moons.
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