You can see the filming of a giant “hole” on Saturn this summer – and it will never happen again until 2040

Over the next few months, there will be several opportunities to see the huge “hole” shooting across Saturn’s surface as its biggest moon shadow passes through the Earth-facing surface of its squealing planet. The rare sight will not be seen again until 2040. And we’ll explain to you how to see it from your backyard.

Every 15 years, Saturn and Earth are perfectly aligned, with the circle of gas giants turning head-on to our planet. In March, the alignment was so perfect that the planet’s Super Smon ring completely disappeared, reported previously by Live Science’s sister site Space.com. Opposition arises in 2032, and you can see the whole dusty disk in the perfect circle around the fifth planet from the Sun.

The current direction of Saturn means that Titan, the planet’s biggest moon, circles it so that a large shadow passes repeatedly across the planet’s surface, just like the way that the moon’s shadow runs across the Earth during the moon’s solar eclipse. The same phenomenon occurs on other major moons of Saturn, including Mimas and Rhea. However, each shadow is smaller and lighter than the Titan, making them difficult to see.

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Titan’s orbit turns Saturn into Saturn about every 16 days. This means that you will be able to see a total of 10 passages while the Earth is still in alignment with the squealing gas giant. Three of these transits already occurred on June 16th. However, there are seven more opportunities if the view can be seen between the present and the medium period, depending on the location and weather conditions at the time.

According to Sky & Telescope, the remaining shipping will occur on July 2nd, July 18th, August 3rd, September 4th, September 20th and October 6th. Please check the table below for exact times.

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As Saturn continues to circumnavigate the Sun, Titans are visible during these transits, but with each viewing it becomes a position associated with the shadows. But it’s slightly smaller than the shadow you cast.

To see your own spectacular transit, you need a good telescope with at least 200x magnification. From North America, most transits begin and end before sunrise. To find out where Saturn is in the night sky, you can use websites such as theskylive.com.

However, we recommend not leaving it to the last minute as weather conditions can completely blur your views. As you can see from the table below, the length of the transit decreases each time. This means you need to make the timing more accurate later in the year. On October 6th, the shadows will only be displayed temporarily if Titan is accurately in transit.

However, even if you miss an impressive shadow in the coming months, you can still see Titan Pass every 16 days until January 2026, until it stops passing through the planet until 2040.

If you’re lucky enough to see stunning heavenly sights, remember that Titan is the second largest moon in the solar system behind Jupiter’s Behemoth Satellite Ganymede. Over 3,200 miles (5,150 kilometers) it is slightly larger than the planet’s mercury and 50% larger than the Earth’s moon.

Furthermore, the only moons in the solar system other than Earth’s son has been visited by human spaceships. The European Space Agency’s Huygens Probe landed on the Saturn satellite in 2005, and is still there today.

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