1. Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest.

2. Saturn was the god of agriculture in Roman mythology. Saturn is also the father of Jupiter, the king of the Roman gods.

3. Saturn is flattened at the poles, due to a fast rotation on its axis.

4. Saturn has 62 known moons, fifty-three have been named. Most of them are small in size.

5. Names of some of Saturn’s moons: the largest is Titan, discovered in 1655; Tethys, Dione, Rhea, & Iapetus, discovered from 1671 to 1672; Mimas & Enceladus, discovered in 1789; and Hyperion, discovered in 1848.

6. A year on Saturn is equal to 29.5 Earth Years.

7. Saturn is the only planet in our solar system that is less dense that water. This means that it would float if there was a body of water large enough to hold it.

8. A day on Saturn is equal to 10 hours and 14 minutes in Earth days.

9. Diameter of Saturn is 119,871 km (74,500 miles).

10. Saturn’s maximum distance from the Sun is 1.5 billion km (938 million miles).

11. Saturn’s minimum distance from Earth is 1.2 billion km (746 million miles).

12. Saturn has fourteen subdivisions of its rings, the widest is at 25,500 km, the B ring.

13. Saturn’s rings are made primarily of “water ice” mixed with dust and other chemicals.

14. Saturn’s fame has been observed going back to ancient times, the Babylonians, Romans, Greek, Hindus, and many more ancient civilizations have taken great interest in studying this ringed planet.

15. If you weigh 100 lbs, your weight on Saturn would be 108 lbs. (multiply your actual weight by 1.08).

16. The temperature on Saturn by the clouds is at -274° F.

17. Titan is Saturn's only moon that has an atmosphere, it is also bigger than Mercury.

18. The first astronomer to make note of Saturn's rings was Galileo, although his telescope was not powerful enough and he thought that the rings were actually satellites.

19. Saturn's rings are made of water, ice, rocks, dust and other chemicals.

20. Pioneer 11 did the first flyby of the planet in 1979. Since then, Voyager 1 was sent closer to Saturn and it took much higher quality photographs.

21. In 2004 the Cassini-Huygens space probe entered into orbit around Saturn and also took vivid photos of some of the planet's moons.

22. The day of the week, Saturday, is named after Saturn.

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Solar System's outer planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are all gas giants. Jupiter and Saturn are composed mainly of molecular hydrogen, metallic hydrogen and helium. While Uranus and Neptune, the ice giants, are made up of water, ammonia and methane ices on their mantle, and hydrogen, helium and methane gases on the surface. Hence, their beautiful baby blue and ultramarine colors.

The sad apart about these gas giants is that landing with a spaceship on them isn't possible because they don't have any surface. And as one goes closer to their cores gaseous atmospheres become thicker and denser. The difference between a rocky planet and a gas giant is that unlike the former, the latter's atmosphere is also indistinguishable with its mantle. So extraterrestrial creatures from Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and other gas giants in the Universe are quite unthinkable.

Gas Giants

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A feature that is most striking in the planet Saturn is its ring system. Its ring system consists of a number of ice chunks in which sizes can be compared to dust particles estimated to be 10 meters big. The spaces in between these chunks are known to be large enough to enable probes to cross through them without any damage. It is said to have seven major rings and numerous smaller ringlets held by shepherd moons in place. The largest ring is known to be about 180,000 miles across.

When it comes to the planet’s number of moons, Saturn owns 60. The largest of its moons is referred to as Titan, which is bigger compared to that from Mercury with 3,200 miles in diameter. It contains within it thick nitrogen atmosphere. Based on researches and probing made for Saturn, it has been discovered that the planet has within it what can be viewed as river channels and shoreline. It can also be described as a surface full of rocks surrounded with an orange haze.

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Saturn

This kind of history reveals one thing about Saturn: it has existed for a long time. The question here, however, is this: when was it actually discovered?

The answer is rather surprising, considering how science has advanced today. Saturn has been known to exist since prehistoric times. Before the arrival of the modern telescope, Saturn was being tracked by the ancient Babylonians by following it just by the naked eye. This dates back to 1830 BC, which may be a good basis in answering the question when Saturn was discovered.

Of the planets first discovered, Saturn is the farthest. The distance gives Saturn the kind of mystique and mystery that made its way beyond Roman and Greek mythology. Saturn, for instance, played a large part in ancient Asian cultures such as Japan, China, Indian, and Babylonian astrology.

Learning about Saturn took some time. It was only during the 1600s that Galileo discovered that Saturn had rings, although he wrongly hypothesized that these were moons, Christian Huygens discovered that the “moons” were actually rings and that the planet had an actual moon. Later, four other Saturn moons were discovered by Giovanni Domenico. New discoveries were further fleshed out until the early 1940s.

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Similar to Uranus, Saturn also has a fluid surface. The atmosphere of Saturn is visible through the telescope, the outer layer of gas. The atmosphere of the planet consists of gases such as hydrogen which makes up the atmosphere by 93% and helium which are the basic gases found on all giant gas planets. Saturn’s atmosphere has three layers of gas and these layers are determined by their temperature. The tropopause is the outer visible layer which is mostly composed of ammonia clouds. Closer to the planets’ surface is the cloud layer made up of ammonium hydro-sulfide clouds. And finally, the layer closest to the icy fluid surface of the planet is made up of clouds of water that drops below 0 temperatures.

The planet named after the Roman god Saturn, much like Jupiter also has a set of rings with objects orbiting the planet independently. Through a telescope, Saturn has four rings, sixty known moons and possibly unknown moonlets that orbit the planet within its rings. Dust and rocky space debris along with gases such as ammonia, acetylene, phosphine and methane, which are considered as trace elements, make up the bands and through the telescope can be viewed and sometimes even with the naked eye as it orbits near the Earth.

Surface of Saturns Moons

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Saturn

Of course, the process involved in truly discovering Saturn as a planet—as well as the people behind these discoveries—is another matter. Babylonian and Hindu astrologers were already recording the movement of the planet way before the existence of Nicolas Copernicus’ theory regarding the Solar System and Galileo Galilee’s telescope. Still, it was these two who proved that Saturn is part of the Solar System as a planet, something similar to Earth (which, in turn, isn’t the center of the universe as was previously believed).

People behind other Saturn discoveries include Christian Huygens, Giovanni Domenico, and William Herschel. Huygens discovered Titan, a Saturn moon. Domenico discovered four other moons of the planet namely, Dione, Iapetus, Rhea, and Tethys. Herschel discovered two other moons: Enceladus and Mimas. Herschel also discovered Uranus, the planet after Saturn. William Henry Pickering, an American astronomer, discovered Phoebe and a British team of astrologers discovered Hyperion. The tenth moon, Janus, was discovered by French astronomer Audouin Doulfus. Previously, the tenth moon was believed to be Themis, also discovered by Pickering.

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There are 7 major moons of Saturn and the rest are grouped based on the mythology from which it is taken. Most of the minor moons of Saturn are less than 1 km across and are icy celestial bodies that closely resemble planetary rings.

Major Moons of Saturn

Titan – The largest of Saturn’s numerous natural satellites measuring 5,150 km across. The surface of Titan is mostly rocky materials and ice and its atmosphere is mostly composed of nitrogen, which could create a climate similar to that of ancient Earth. It is believed that Titan’s environment can nurture extraterrestrial microorganisms.

Rhea – Named after the mother of the Olympian gods in Greek Mythology. It is the second largest moon of Saturn measuring 1,530 km across and is the 9th largest natural satellite in the solar system

Iapetus – With a diameter of 1,470 km, it is the 3rd largest moon of Saturn. It was discovered by Giovanni Cassini in 1671. It has a distinct feature of having a bright and dark hemisphere.

Dione – The 4th largest moon of Saturn named after a vague character in Greek Mythology. It measures 1,122 km in diameter and is the 15th largest moon in the solar System. Despite its size, its mass exceeds all the moons smaller than itself combined.

Thetys – Discovered by Giovanni Cassini in 1684, this moon named after a titan in the Greek Mythology has a 1,070 km diameter. Like Dione and Rhea, the surface of Thetys is mostly icy.

Enceladus – Discovered by William Herschel in 1789, it has a diameter of 500 kilometers. It has a very reflective surface and it reflects most of the sunlight that hits its surface.

Mimas – Also discovered by William Herschel in 1789. It has a 400 km diameter and has low density that led scientists to believe it is mostly made of ice with very little percentage of rocks.

Moons of Saturn

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It is commonly believed that the rings of Saturn are composed of a series of disks orbiting around the planet with gaps in between. Most of which are caused by Saturn’s inner moons while others have yet to be explained.

The rings of Saturn are divided into 5 main groups: D ring, C ring, B ring, A ring and F ring.

D Ring – It is the ring closest to the planet and was discovered by the Voyager 1 in 1980. Within the D ring, three ringlets were seen: D73, D72 and D68. About two and a half decades after it was discovered, astronomers noticed that D72 moved closer to Saturn by about 200 kilometers and has grown much fainter. It is 7,500 kilometers wide.

C Ring – Is faint especially compared to the A and B rings. This is because it is composed of darker materials than the other rings. It was discovered in 1850 by four different astronomers; William and George Bond, William Dawes and Johann Galle. It is 17,500 kilometers wide.

B Ring – It is the largest, brightest and has the most mass among Saturns rings. It is estimated that nearly all of the sunlight that passes through the B ring is reflected. Very little is known of the B ring with regard to its irregularity of its brightness and density. It is 25,500 kilometers wide.

A ring – There are 2 gaps within the A ring: Encke gap and Keeler gap. It is separated from the B ring by the Cassini Division and its boundary is near Atlas’ orbit.

F ring – It is the outermost ring of Saturn undergoing changes every hour. It is also the thinnest ring with an estimate 30 – 500 km in width.

Rings of Saturn

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Saturn’s

Saturn’s atmosphere forms a banded pattern. Saturn's winds are one of the fastest in the Solar System. According to the satellite Voyager, the winds can go up to 500 m/s.

Long-lived ovals have been observed on Saturn’s atmosphere. The Hubble Space Telescope found a large white cloud close to the equator in 1991 which was not seen in previous Voyager orbits. This is has been given a nickname, “Great White Spot.” Such a storm occurs once every year in Saturn. Take note that one Saturn year is equivalent to 30 Earth years. The most famous storm happened on 1933. The next storm is said to occur in the year 2020.

The Cassini spacecraft brought back images of Saturn. The images show its northern hemisphere as being bright blue in color. This color cannot be seen on Earth because it is being blocked by its rings. Rayleigh scattering is said to be the cause of the blue color. The polar vortex of Saturn is warm. This is a unique feature of Saturn and no other planet exhibits something similar to this. This is the warmest part of Saturn.

A hexagon shaped cloud pattern has been seen around the north polar vortex. It is still unknown as to why it is shaped that way. Astronomers think that a standing-wave pattern in the atmosphere causes it to be in that shape but some think that the hexagon shape is a novel aurora.

Latest News on Saturn

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Saturn

Saturn is a gas giant, meaning it is mostly composed of an upper layer of gases such as molecular helium and hydrogen surrounding a hot rocky core. Because of this, although Saturn is 95 times larger than Earth, its density is only 0.7 that of water. Saturn’s atmosphere is composed of some 75% of hydrogen and 25% helium along with small amounts of other substances such as methane and water ice. The planet is surrounded by clouds, with the upper layer composed of ammonia ice clouds and where temperatures can reach as low as -250° C. Below this layer is a lower deck of ammonium hydro-sulfate clouds, with average temperatures rising to -70° C. The lowest layer is made up of water clouds, and mean temperatures here are at the freezing point of water – zero degrees Celsius.

At the core, however, temperatures can reach as high as 11,700° C. Scientists believe that its great internal heat is due to the sinking of helium from the upper atmosphere through the liquid hydrogen at the interior. Like its neighbor Jupiter, Saturn also experiences powerful storms, although not as intense as those on Jupiter. Storms mostly appear around the bands that circle the planet, with winds at the equator reaching as fast as 1,800 km/hr, and can rage for months or even years.

Moons of Saturn

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