                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                               2022 August 19

                             Saturn: 1993 - 2022
                 Image Credit & Copyright: Tunc Tezel (TWAN)

   Explanation: Saturn is the most distant planet of the Solar System
   easily visible to the unaided eye. With this extraordinary, long-term
   astro-imaging project begun in 1993, you can follow the ringed gas
   giant for one Saturn year as it wanders once around the ecliptic plane,
   finishing a single orbit around the Sun by 2022. Constructed from
   individual images made over 29 Earth years, the split panorama is
   centered along the ecliptic and crossed by the plane of our Milky Way
   galaxy. Saturn's position in 1993 is at the right side, upper panel in
   the constellation Capricornus and progresses toward the left. It
   returns to the spot in Capricornus at left in the lower panel in 2022.
   The consistent imaging shows Saturn appears slightly brighter during
   the years 2000-2005 and 2015-2019, periods when its beautiful rings
   were tilted more face-on to planet Earth.

                      Tomorrow's picture: light-weekend
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       Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
            NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.
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                      A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC,
                           NASA Science Activation
                             & Michigan Tech. U.

