For centuries, people have studied Saturn's rings, but questions about the structure and composition of the rings lingered. It was only in 1857 when the physicist James Clerk Maxwell demonstrated that the rings must be composed of many small particles and not solid rings around the planet, and not until the 1970s that spectroscopic evidence definitively showed that the rings are composed mostly of water ice. While they look solid in many images, Saturn's rings are actually translucent.
Profile:
Mass: 568,319,000,000,000,000 billion kg (95.16 x Earth)
Equatorial Diameter: 120,536 km
Polar Diameter: 108,728 km
Equatorial Circumference: 365,882 km
Known Moons: 62
Notable Moons: Titan, Rhea & Enceladus
Known Rings: 30+ (7 Groups)
Orbit Distance: 1,426,666,422 km (9.58 x Earth's Distance to the Sun)
Orbit Period: 10,755.70 Earth days (29.45 Earth years)
Surface Temperature: -139 °C
Adorned with thousands of beautiful ringlets, Saturn is unique among the planets. All four gas giant planets have rings -- made of chunks of ice and rock -- but none are as spectacular or as complicated as Saturn's. Like the other gas giants, Saturn is mostly a massive ball of hydrogen and helium.
Saturn Information
Missions:
• Cassini (1997)
NASA/ESA Mission to Saturn
• Huygens (2004)
NASA/ESA Mission to Saturn's satellite Titan
• Pioneer 11 (1979)
NASA Saturn flyby
• Voyager 1 (1977)
NASA Mission to Jupiter and Saturn
• Voyager 2 (1977)
NASA Mission to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and beyond
Latest News About Saturn
Thunderstorms On Saturn Can Cause Massive Polar Cyclones On The Planet
June 16, 2015
Saturn’s images, beamed back to Earth by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft in 2008, revealed that “hotspots” observed on the planet’s poles were massive cyclones, but scientists did not know exactly what could cause such powerful storms. Now, a new study has shown that small thunderstorms on the planet may eventually add up to massive, long-lived cyclones at the poles.
Saturn's Moons
Saturn, the sixth planet from the sun, is home to a vast array of intriguing and unique worlds. From the cloud-shrouded surface of Titan to crater-riddled Phoebe, each of Saturn's moons tells another piece of the story surrounding the Saturn system. A total of 62 confirmed satellites have been found orbiting Saturn.
To learn more about Saturn's moons, click on the button below!
Image Credit & Copyright: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI
Image Credit & Copyright: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI
This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 37 degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on May 4, 2014. Image Credit & Copyright: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
10 Need-to-Know Things About Saturn:
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If the sun were as tall as a typical front door, the Earth would be the size of a nickel and Saturn would be about as big as a basketball.
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Saturn orbits our sun, a star. Saturn is the sixth planet from the sun at a distance of about 1.4 billion km (886 million miles) or 9.5 AU.
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One day on Saturn takes 10.7 hours (the time it takes for Saturn to rotate or spin once). Saturn makes a complete orbit around the sun (a year in Saturnian time) in 29 Earth years.
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Saturn is a gas-giant planet and does not have a solid surface.
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Saturn's atmosphere is made up mostly of hydrogen (H2) and helium (He).
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Saturn has 53 known moons with an additional 9 moons awaiting confirmation of their discovery.
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Saturn has the most spectacular ring system of all our solar system's planets. It is made up of seven rings with several gaps and divisions between them.
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Five missions have been sent to Saturn. Since 2004, Cassini has been exploring Saturn, its moons and rings.
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Saturn cannot support life as we know it. However, some of Saturn's moons have conditions that might support life.
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When Galileo Galilei looked at Saturn through a telescope in the 1600s, he noticed strange objects on each side of the planet and drew in his notes a triple-bodied planet system and then later a planet with arms or handles. Thehandles turned out to be the rings of Saturn.
Physical Characteristics of Saturn
Saturn is a gas giant made up mostly of hydrogen and helium. Saturn is bigenough to hold more than 760 Earths, and is more massive than any other planet except Jupiter, roughly 95 times Earth's mass. However, Saturn has the lowest density of all the planets, and is the only one less dense than water.
The yellow and gold bands seen in Saturn's atmosphere are the result of super-fast winds in the upper atmosphere, which can reach up to 1,100 mph (1,800 km/h) around its equator, combined with heat rising from the planet's interior.
Saturn spins faster than any other planet except Jupiter, completing a rotation roughly every 10-and-a-half hours. This rapid spinning causes Saturn to bulge at its equator and flatten at its poles — the planet is 8,000 miles (13,000 kilometers) wider at its equator than between the poles.
Research & exploration
The first spacecraft to reach Saturn was Pioneer 11 in 1979, flying within 13,700 miles (22,000 km) of it, which discovered the planet's two of its outer rings as well as the presence of a strong magnetic field. The Voyager spacecraft discovered the planet's rings are made up of ringlets, and sent back data that led to the discovery or confirmation of the existence of nine moons.
The Cassini spacecraft now in orbit around Saturn is the largest interplanetary spacecraft ever built, a two-story-tall probe that, at 6 tons in weight (5,650 kilograms), is roughly equal in mass to an empty 30-passenger school bus. It discovered plumes on the icy moon Enceladus, and carried the Huygens probe, which plunged through Titan's atmosphere to successfully land on its surface. After a decade of observation, Cassini has returned incredible data about the planet and its moons, as well as a photo recreating the original “Pale Blue Dot” image, which captures Earth from behind Saturn, in 2013.
