Notes

Saturn

Saturn is the sixth planet from the sun

Saturn has at least eighteen known moons

Saturn has at least seven major rings

Saturn's clouds appear to be yellow

Saturn's largest moon is called Titan

Saturn is the second largest planet from the sun

The minimum distance from Earth to Saturn is about 746 million miles or 1.2 billion kilometers

The maximum distance from the Sun to Saturn is about 938 million miles or 1.5 billion kilometers

Orbit means the path followed by an object in space as it goes around another object

It takes Saturn about 29.5 Earth years to orbit the Sun

Titans distance is similar to the United States

Saturn is much bigger than Earth. In fact, Saturn’s diameter is 120,000 kilometers (74,600 miles), while Earth’s diameter is 12,756 kilometers (7,927 miles). That makes Saturn more than nine times larger than Earth!

Unlike Earth, which only has one moon, Saturn has at least eighteen moons. That is more than any other planet.

Saturn is made of gases—mostly hydrogen and helium.

Saturn takes about 10,759 Earth days to go around the Sun. (Remember, the Earth takes 365 days to go around the Sun.) That means a year on Saturn lasts almost 30 Earth years!

Saturn is best known for its seven rings that surround the planet at its equator. The seven rings of Saturn consist of thousands of narrow ringlets, which are made of billions of pieces of ice and rock.

Saturn’s seven main rings are named for the letters A through G. Gaps, or divisions, between the rings are named for famous astronomers like Jean Domenique Cassini.

Cassini was a French astronomer whose name was used for a NASA spacecraft. The Cassini was launched in October 1997, and is scheduled to arrive at Saturn in June 2004.

Saturn’s rings were first seen in 1610 by Galileo using a very simple telescope in which the rings looked like “handles.”

By 1659, Christian Huygens, using an improved telescope, concluded that Saturn was encircled by a flat ring structure, though he thought that the rings were solid.

Saturn is nine times larger than Earth

In Roman mythology, Saturn was the god of time.

During the 1980s, two Voyager spacecraft sent back information that changed the way astronomers think about Saturn. Voyager 1 showed the rings had a definite structure, with spokes and gaps in between. Until Voyager 1, Saturn was known to have only 11 moons.

The information provided by the Voyager raised many new questions for scientists. In October 1997, NASA launched the spacecraft Cassini. It will arrive at Saturn in June 2004. ,