Similarly, the moon moves about an inch away from the Earth each year. That there is a fun fact!

To add to that, as the moon slowly moves away from the Earth, it has a very small braking effect on Earth's rotation. What this means is.. eventually this will lead to both the Earth and the Moon becoming tidally locked, or with the SAME side of the Earth AND Moon permanently facing one another.

It may be worth looking up how long this is going to take. I'm too lazy to figure it out right now. We're talking a super long time scale.

It may be such a long time, that either humanity (as we currently know it) will be gone, or maybe our Sun will end it's life by the time that could come about. Something may even disrupt our solar system long before then. Such as our galaxy's destined collision with the Andromeda galaxy.

^ Interesting, I didn't know that so I looked it up.

http://starryskies.com/articles/2007/10/primal-future-moon.html

In summary:

It's sad but Saturn is leaving the Northern ecliptic and crossing over to the dark side for our Southern hemisphere Australian friends to enjoy for the next 15 years. I started observing Saturn 8 years ago when it was around as high as it would get in the Alaskan sky. I think the next really good Saturn observing for anyone in Alaska will be the year 2023 or so. Unfortunately the planet takes ~30 Earth years to go around the Sun once. On the bright side, Jupiter is now leaving the far South ecliptic and heading back up for us Northern observers. Thankfully, it orbits much quicker than Saturn.

Deathcow, do you have a link for this info about the north/south ecliptic? I can't find it. Since Earth takes only a year to go around the sun, we always catch up to our neighbors faster than they catch up to us.

But you're right: if Saturn had a tilt in its orbital plane, it will not be visible to half the Earth for an extended period. I've just not heard of that before. Is that what you're saying?

Or because you're in such a high latitude (Alaska), that you don't get the same chance as the rest of us to enjoy celestial bodies? That's understandable. Worry not, one will not have to go all the way to Australia to enjoy Saturn. They just can't be in Alaska. But then, who is? Kidding.

I know that Saturn's rings will "disappear" next year due to our vantage point only to come back later, like they always do. I just saw Saturn last month with my 6" Newtonian reflector here in NC, USA. It was beautiful. Jupiter is really great this month here too, nice & "zenithy," as I call it.