Saturn is the second biggest planet in our solar system. It is the sixth planet from the Sun. It is the farthest planet you can see with the naked eye. Saturn is known for its rings. Saturn’s rings were discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei, an Italian scientist. He called them handles and thought they were attached to the planet. In 1655, Huygens, a Dutch astronomer, discovered that the rings were separate. Saturn is named after the Roman god of the harvest.

Saturn’s distance from the Sun ranges from 840 million miles (1,331.8 million km)  to 938 million miles (1,509.6 million km) . Saturn’s year is 29.5 Earth years long. Saturn spins fast. Its day is 10.2 Earth hours long. The diameter at the equator is 74,500 miles (119,896 km). Saturn’s main atmosphere gases are hydrogen (97%) and helium (3%). Saturn has 18 known moons, more than any other planet, except Uranus.

Like Jupiter, Saturn is a "gas giant". It has an iron core, then a layer of liquid metallic hydrogen, then a layer of liquid hydrogen. The upper atmosphere is a cloud of hydrogen and helium. Saturn looks gold with brown, yellow, red, and blue bands. There are raging winds on Saturn.

When we think about Saturn, we think about its rings. The rings are thousands of miles wide and only about 40 miles (64.3 km) thick. The rings are made of pieces of ice. Some ice pieces are like small rocks. Other pieces are as big as a house. The rings are in seven groups--four main groups and three fainter groups.

Three spacecraft have visited Saturn: Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, and Voyager 2. They studied the electromagnetic spectrum and studied the magnetic field. The Cassini spacecraft is to reach Saturn in 2002. It will launch the Huygens Probe to study Titan, one of Saturn’s moons.  Saturn is one of our most facinating planets.

Saturn Facts

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