A Cassini spacecraft image of Saturn, the ringed giant planet
This mesmerizing view of Saturn was acquired by the Saturn-bound Cassini spacecraft. The image shows also some of the planets moons. Cassini has been orbiting Saturn, since July 2004.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

On 22 March 2010, the Solar System featured a magnificent alignment. Saturn, the ringed wonderful planet, was opposite to the Sun in the sky; this is an interesting astronomical phenomenon, termed opposition. To an observer looking on the Solar System, from a large distance, above the plane of Earth’s orbit, Saturn, Earth and the Sun were on a straight line;  Earth was situated between the Sun and Saturn, the sixth planet.

When a planet is in opposition to the Sun, it rises at sunset, sets at sunrise, and, therefore, remains visible throughout the night, on the opposition day. Saturn was visible to the unaided eye as a bright yellowish star, shining in the eastern sky, in the early evening hours, on 22 March. It was approximately 1,275 million km from Earth. It is currently visible among the stars of the zodiacal constellation Virgo.
The oppositions of Saturn occur every 378.1 days. The best time to observe Saturn and its magnificent rings is around or at opposition. Interestingly, Saturn’s rings can be viewed with a small telescope, if the magnification is at least 20X.

Saturn is the second largest planet, after mighty Jupiter (approximately 142,000 km across). The equatorial diameter of Saturn is approximately 120,000 km, or about nine times Earth’s diameter, but the polar diameter of Saturn is approximately 109,000 km. Therefore, Saturn is not spherical in shape, but is rather markedly flattened. Earth shows a much smaller, but significant, degree of flattening than Saturn’s. Saturn’s mass is 95 times that of Earth.

The average distance between Saturn and the Sun is about 1.4 billion km. Saturn’s distance from Earth varies from about 1,200 million km to 1,660 million km. With an average orbital speed of nearly 10 km/s, Saturn lasts about 29.5 years, or 10,759 days, to orbit the Sun. The day on Saturn lasts about 10 hours 39 minutes.

Further Reading

About Saturn and its Moons
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/science/index.cfm

Cassini Homepage
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm