Saturn


Mass (Earth=1)95.1
Equatorial diameter (km)120,000
Period (years)29.5
Mean distance from Sun, 106 km1,430
Density (water=1)0.704
Surface gravity m/s29.05
Moons

A gas giant like Jupiter, Saturn is the least dense of all the planets, 70% as dense as water. If Saturn could be dropped into a gigantic tub of water, it would float. Saturn, like Jupiter, is mostly composed of hydrogen and helium, but is thought to have a heavy element core on the order of10 times the mass of the Earth.

Saturn's ring system is visible with a small telescope. NASA's Voyager space-probes revealed that the rings number more than a thousand. Present understanding is that the rings did not form with the planet but are the remains of a shattered moon or comet, formed some 100 million years ago.

The great ring is a "disk more than 180,000 miles wide but scarcely 60 ft high, making it many orders of magnitude flatter than a pancake. Ring researchers compare it to a sheet of tissue paper spread across a football field." Sobel

Planetary data
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Saturn's Moons

Graphic from NASA/JPL and the Cassini site.

Our knowledge of the moons of Saturn was greatly increased by the Cassini Mission.

Iapetus shows a brightness variation of a factor of 10, a change in intensity believed to be caused by the existence of ice on one side and black carbonaceous material on the other. ( Weisburd, Science News 133, June 11, 1988 p374) Enceladus has a heavily cratered surface; it was imaged clearly in the Voyager program. The moons Hyperion, Epimetheus and Dione were also imaged by Cassini.

References:

Cassini Mission

Wiki Moons of Saturn

"Alien-life hunters focus on moons in outer solar system", Nadia Drake, Science News 180, #8, Oct 8, 2011, p22.

TitanEnceladus
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