Saturn is currently in what astronomers refer to as opposition, which means Earth is in a line between Saturn and the Sun. This occurs every 378 days and means Earth is at its closest distance possible to Saturn.

My favorite planet in the solar system, other than the one we're all living on, is Saturn.

It's not the only planet in our solar system with a ring system, but it is by far the most extensive and beautiful. If it's available in the night sky through my telescopes when I put on my starwatch parties, Saturn is by far the crowd favorite.

Right now, Saturn is not only available in the night sky, it is also at its best, because it's in what astronomers call opposition. That's when Earth is in a line between the Sun and Saturn. This occurs every 378 days as the Earth and Saturn journey around the sun in their respective orbits.

Since it takes Saturn 29 years to orbit the sun compared with our Earth's one-year orbital cycle, the opposition line up is an annual affair. Saturn is the brightest it will be this year because it is at its minimum distance to the Earth for 2008 — 771 million miles away. Also, since Saturn is opposite the sun in the sky, the ringed wonder is available all night long, rising at sunset and setting at sunrise.

Finding Saturn in the sky is easy. As with all planets, it migrates among the background stars, and this year, it's residing in the constellation Leo the Lion, that not only resembles the profile of a lion's head but also looks exactly like a backward question mark.

As soon as it's dark enough in the evening, look for a left leaning backward question mark rising above the eastern horizon. The dot at the bottom of the lazy dyslexic query mark is a moderately bright star called Regulus, a star four times the diameter of our sun and more than 446 trillion miles away!

Regulus marks the heart of the great celestial beast but takes a back seat in brightness this year because Saturn is three times as bright as Regulus. You can't miss it. Saturn is shining brightly just to the lower left of Regulus at it climbs into the night sky.

Saturn is a must-see telescope target. The planet itself is 75,000 miles in diameter, second only to Jupiter in our solar system, and like Jupiter, it's mainly a giant ball of hydrogen and helium with a rocky core.

It's Saturn's extensive ring system that makes you say, "wow," when you gaze at it through a telescope. It spans more than 150,000 miles in diameter, more than two thirds the distance between the Earth and our Moon. At the same time, though, it's very, very thin, with a thickness of generally less than the length of a football field.

While Saturn's ring system looks like a solid sheet, it's anything but that. It's made up of literally billions and billions of ice-covered particles from the size of dust grains to the size of an average house. All these particles are orbiting Saturn like tiny little moons.

Believe it or not, as extensive as the ring system is, most astronomers estimate that all of the particles in Saturn's ring system add up to the size of a small moon not more than about 150 miles in diameter.

In fact, one of the theories is that Saturn's ring system was created when an icy moon got too close to the planet in its lopsided orbit and was literally blown to bits by Saturn's strong tidal forces about 50 to 100 million years ago. The debris spread out to make the ring system we see today, with gravitational forces assisting one of the "shepherd" moons to keep the particles in nearly the same plane.

Unfortunately, this year, the angle of Saturn's ring system with respect to the planet is small from our vantage point on Earth. Because of that, the ring system is almost on edge from our view.

As Saturn orbits the sun every 29 years we see the ring system from a constantly changing perspective. In 2003, the angle between the rings and the planet was much larger, and we had a much better wide open view of the ring system. Ever since then, the angle of rings has tilted to a more narrow angle. Next year, the ring system will appear nearly edge on and be really hard to see. In fact, in fall 2009, the rings will disappear completely, but in the two-thousand-teens, the ring angle will open up again to appreciative eyes.

No matter what angle the ring system is, you can always see some of Saturn's moons sprinkled around the planet. The more powerful your telescope, the more moons you'll see. They look like tiny little stars swarming Saturn.

Through just about any telescope, you should be able to spot Titan, Saturn's largest moon, which is larger than our own moon. A couple of years ago, the Huygens probe separated from the Cassini spacecraft and plowed through Titan's thick atmosphere of nitrogen and methane and actually landed on the surface, which mostly consists of rocky terrain and large pools and oceans of liquid methane.

By the way, you might have heard when you were growing up that if you had a big enough bathtub that Saturn would float on the surface. That's true, because the density of Saturn is less than that of water. Good luck getting enough hot water for that tub!

Again, Saturn and its ring system are wonderful to see through even a small telescope, but timing is everything.

The later in the evening and the higher the planet is, the clearer the image of Saturn will be, as you don't have to peer through as much of Earth's atmosphere.

The absolute best view you'll get of Saturn in the next few weeks will be around midnight, when it will be at its peak altitude in the high southern sky.

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and professional broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis and is author of the new book, "Florida Starwatch," available at bookstores and at his website www.lynchandthestars.com.