And it lasts through the end of the year. With or without a telescope, the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn make skywatching simple and rewarding by hanging close, bright and long in the night sky. Saturn is the brightest it has been in more than two decades. Click here to see a Flash graphic that illustrates how a planet lines up when it's at opposition, conjunction and other positions. If you could view the solar system from above, you'd see Earth racing around the Sun on an inner track, more quickly than the gas giants.
Opposition is also the point at which a planet is closest to Earth.
Therefore it appears larger and subtle features can be easier to view. So to see Jupiter and Saturn, all you have to do is go outside and look up. And with a pair of binoculars, more surprises await. You can watch them change position in a surprisingly short amount of time. The moons appear as small pinpoints of light, like tiny stars.