Saturn is also a giant gas planet with an outer atmosphere that is mostly hydrogen and helium. Its atmosphere has traces of ammonia, phosphine, water vapor, and hydrocarbons giving it a yellowish-brown color.

The opposition effect, a brightness surge that is visible on Saturn’s rings when the sun is directly behind the spacecraft, is captured here as a colorful halo of light moving across Saturn’s sunlit rings.

Saturn’s dark-side rings glow in shades of brown and gold, contrasting with the more neutral appearance of the icy moon Tethys. This view looks toward the anti-Saturn side of Tethys (1,062 kilometers, or 660 miles across). North is up and rotated 35 degrees to the right.

All the hues of Saturn’s B Ring pop out in a high-resolution color image sent back by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. This natural color view shows a portion of Saturn’s B Ring. Saturn’s rings are ethereal structures made up mainly of ice and rock. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft can see the striations and patterns in the rings.

Jupiter: orange and white bands. The white bands are colored by ammonia clouds, while the orange comes from ammonium hydrosulfide clouds. None of the four “gas giant” planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) has a solid surface, so all we see are just clouds in their atmospheres. Saturn: pale gold.

Saturn is just to the east of Jupiter on the sky’s dome. The two are noticeable for their brightness and nearness to each other. View at EarthSky Community Photos.

Binoculars or a telescope may help you distinguish the planets. A telescope would enable a view of Saturn’s rings and the brightest moons of both planets, he said. Jupiter will appear brightest and be easily visible. Saturn will be slightly fainter and will appear slightly above and to the left of Jupiter.

Simply look to the west-southwest about 30 minutes after sunset. Jupiter will shine brightly to the left, with Saturn, a touch dimmer, adjacent to the right. They will appear extremely close — only about a quarter the width of the full moon apart from each other.

Saturn is currently in the constellation of Capricornus.

Aquarius

Planets Visible in New York

Shortly after sunset, in the Northern Hemisphere, look into the southwestern sky and you should see the duo shining brightly. Hold your pinkie finger at arm’s length once you spot the spot and that should be enough to block out Jupiter and Saturn, which are 11 and nine times the diameter of Earth, respectively.

Jupiter and Saturn align for the first time in 800 years. Framed by a large windmill, and a plane passing by with its contrail backlit by the sun, Jupiter and Saturn align for the first time in 800 years on December 21, 2020 in Berthoud, Colorado.

Venus. After the Moon, Venus is the brightest natural object in the night sky. It is both the Earth’s closest neighbor in our Solar System and the planet most similar to Earth in size, gravity, and composition. We can’t see the surface of Venus from Earth, because it is covered with thick clouds.

Which planets can we see from Earth with naked eyes? Only five planets are visible from Earth to the naked-eye; Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The other two— Neptune and Uranus—require a small telescope.

Venus

List

All the brightest objects in the night sky in the list, except for Mercury, look better as the sky grows darker. Venus, Jupiter, Sirius, and the Moon remain above the horizon for several hours after sunset, and Mars rises higher as the evening progresses, peaking around midnight.

Answer: The largest known star (in terms of mass and brightness) is called the Pistol Star. It is believed to be 100 times as massive as our Sun, and 10,000,000 times as bright! In 1990, a star named the Pistol Star was known to lie at the center of the Pistol Nebula in the Milky Way Galaxy.

Jupiter is usually the fourth brightest object in the sky (after the Sun, the Moon and Venus); however at times Mars appears brighter than Jupiter.