How far away is Saturn right now?

1,277,686,774

kilometres · Saturn's distance from Earth

About 8.5 times the distance from Earth to the Sun.
An airliner at cruising speed would take 161 years to cover it.

Right now Saturn is up all night: it rises around sunset and sets around sunrise.

Right now Saturn is about 1.3 billion kilometres from Earth, and the gap changes every second. A radio message, moving at the speed of light, needs 1.2 hours to cross it.

Saturn is the farthest planet that people found with their eyes alone, long before telescopes. Its distance from us swings between 1.2 billion and 1.7 billion kilometres. The next close approach is on 18 October 2027.

Time until Saturn's next close approach to Earth

351 d 22 h 13 m 54 s

Measured

Length of one turn of Saturn (sidereal day)

10 h 39 m 22 s

Measured, with error

Temperature of Saturn at the 1 bar level

-139 °C

Measured, with error

Number of known moons of Saturn

293

Measured

What is Saturn?

The ringed planet

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun, and the second largest. Like Jupiter, it is a gas giant, made mostly of hydrogen and helium. It has no solid ground.

It is about 9.4 times as wide as Earth, and about 844 Earths would fit inside it. Yet its mass is only about 95 times Earth's.

So Saturn is light for its size. It is the only planet whose average density is lower than water's. NASA puts it this way: Saturn could float in a bathtub, if there were one big enough.

People have watched Saturn since ancient times. The Romans named it after their god of farming and wealth, the father of Jupiter.

120,536 kmEquatorial diameter of Saturn

The next close approach

Why the distance keeps changing

Earth and Saturn both circle the Sun, like runners on a track. Saturn has a far outer lane and a slow pace. Earth moves about 3.1 times as fast, and Saturn needs about 29 Earth years for one lap. Since you opened this page, Saturn has travelled 0 kilometres along its path.

So Earth keeps overtaking Saturn, about once every 1.04 years. Then the two planets are on the same side of the Sun, as close as they get. Saturn stands opposite the Sun in our sky, rising at sunset and up all night. Astronomers call this opposition.

About half a year later, Saturn lies beyond the Sun. At most it can be 1.7 billion kilometres away.

Saturn's orbit is slightly oval too, so some meetings are closer than others. The nearest come when Earth catches up near Saturn's closest point to the Sun. The clock on this page counts down to the next close approach, on 18 October 2027.

351 d 22 h 13 m 54 sTime until Saturn's next close approach to Earth

Right now

A hello that takes more than an hour

Radio waves are a kind of light, and nothing travels faster. Even so, a message to Saturn takes a long time. At today's distance it needs 1.2 hours to arrive, and the reply needs as long again.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft worked across that gap for thirteen years. It reached Saturn in 2004, the first spacecraft to orbit it. It carried Europe's Huygens probe, which descended to the surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, in 2005.

On 15 September 2017, with its fuel running low, Cassini dived into Saturn on purpose, collecting science until the end. The team chose this so it could never crash into a moon that might hold life. When its last signal reached Earth, Cassini was already gone.

1,277,686,774 kmSaturn's distance from Earth

The main rings

Rings wide but thin

Other giant planets have rings too, but none like these. They are made of countless pieces of ice and rock. Most are small grains or chunks the size of a house; a few are as big as mountains.

From edge to edge, the main rings span about 270,000 kilometres. About 21 Earths could sit side by side across them. Yet in most places they are only about 10 metres thick. That makes them about 27 million times as wide as they are thick.

Each ring circles Saturn at its own speed. Scientists think the rings are pieces of comets, asteroids or shattered moons, torn apart by Saturn's gravity before they could reach the planet. Beyond the bright main rings lie fainter ones, reaching much farther out.

273,560 kmWidth of Saturn's main rings, from outer edge to outer edge

Temperature at the 1 bar level

Cold, windy and quick to spin

Saturn has no surface either. So its temperature is measured where the air presses as hard as ours does at sea level, the 1 bar level. There it is -139 °C, against 15 °C on Earth. Saturn is about 9.5 times as far from the Sun as we are.

The winds are fierce. Near the equator they blow at up to about 400 metres per second, about 1.6 times as fast as an airliner. Around the north pole, a jet stream runs in a six-sided ring, a hexagon wider than Earth.

Saturn spins fast: one turn takes 10 h 39 m 22 s. Its year is long, about 24,000 of its own days. And Saturn is tilted much as Earth is, so it has seasons, each lasting several of our years.

-139 °CTemperature of Saturn at the 1 bar level

Moons known

The most moons

Saturn has 293 known moons, as of October 2026, far more than any other planet. More are waiting to be confirmed.

The largest is Titan, bigger than the planet Mercury. It is the only moon with a thick atmosphere. It is also the only world besides Earth known to have liquid on its surface. It has rain, rivers, lakes and seas, made not of water but of methane and ethane.

Enceladus is small and bright white. From cracks near its south pole, jets of water vapour and ice spray into space. They come from an ocean under the ice, so a spacecraft can fly through them and taste it. Cassini did.

NASA is building a flying robot, Dragonfly, to explore Titan. As of October 2026 it is due to launch no earlier than July 2028 and to arrive in late 2034.