Oppositions, conjunctions, seasons, and ring plane crossings of the giant planets | The Planetary Society
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2016/06031044-oppositions-conjunctions-rpx.html
When are the solstices and equinoxes on the giant planets, and when are they best positioned for view from Earth? I ask these questions a lot
as I write about Earth photos of giant planets, and I finally decided to gather the answers to those questions in a single post. I queried the
JPL Horizons database for all the dates that I was looking for, figuring I'd save myself time looking up these dates for future posts. "Save
myself time," ha! Famous last words. I spent all day playing with data tables and figuring out what they meant. In this post, I'll list orbital
information for Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter. (If you're interested in Mars, here's an explainer on Mars' seasonal calendar; I'll cover
Mars, Venus, and Mercury orbital events in a future post.)
![](http://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/images/6-saturn/2012/20130115_titan_seasons_diagram_ralph-lorenz_f840.png)