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Solar eclipses on Saturn occur when the naturalsatellites ofSaturn pass in front of theSun as seen from Saturn. Theseeclipses happen fairly often. For example, some of Saturn's moons can have a solar eclipse every day depending on the saturnian season.[1]
For bodies which appear smaller inangular diameter than the Sun, the proper, more general term would be atransit and for those that are larger than the apparent size of the Sun, the proper term would be anoccultation.[2]
Seven of Saturn's satellites –Janus,Mimas,Enceladus,Tethys,Rhea,Dione andTitan – are large enough and near enough to eclipse or occult the Sun, or in other words to cast anumbra on Saturn. Most of the more distant satellites, besides being tiny, have orbits that are strongly inclined to the plane of Saturn's orbit, and would rarely be seen to transit.
At this distance, the sun covers only about 3arcminutes in the sky of Saturn. In comparison, the seven major moons of Saturn have angular diameters of 5–10' (Mimas), 5–9' (Enceladus), 10–15' (Tethys), 10–12' (Dione), 8–11' (Rhea), 14–15' (Titan), and 1–2' (Iapetus).Iapetus is Saturn's third largest moon, but is too far away to completely eclipse the Sun. Janus, a very close moon to Saturn, has an angular diameter of about 7', meaning that it can fully cover the Sun.
UnlikeJupiter, Saturn has a moderate axial tilt of 26.7 degrees.[3] This means that solar eclipses on Saturn are much more rare than solar eclipses on Jupiter.
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