SOLAR CONJUNCTION OF SATURN FROM SOHO Taken by Helio C. Vital on December 12, 2016 @ Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

This 16-frame animation shows the solar conjunction of Saturn as it transited across the 1.5° field of view of the Lasco C2 white-light coronograph aboard the Solar Heliospheric Observatory. Near-realtime photos, taken from 11:00 UT of Dec.08 to 5:00 UT of Dec.12, have been used to create an animated gif. In November Saturn had entered the Sun`s glare, leaving naked-eye visibility. Measuring Soho images (downloaded from https://sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/data_query) yielded as 77 arcminutes (equal to 4.7 solar radii) the minimum distance between the Sun and 0.4-mag Saturn (1.65 billion km away from us). The same figure had been calculated by using SkyMap.