Opposition Surge 2019

For a few days surrounding every opposition of Saturn, we see a substantial brightening of the rings as the angle of sunlight approaches 0°. This effect goes by a few names: opposition surge, opposition effect, and Seeliger effect. There are a couple potential reasons this happens:

• More light is reflected back towards the Sun, which we see when Earth is between it and Saturn.
• There is less shadowing by ring particles on other ring particles visible near opposition.