How far is Saturn from Earth?

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Saturn orbits the Sun at a mean distance of 1,427,000,000 km (887 million miles). Its closest distance to Earth is about 1.2 billion km (746 million miles), and its phase angle—the angle that it makes with the Sun and Earth—never exceeds about 6°. Saturn, seen from the vicinity of Earth, thus always appears nearly fully illuminated.