Saturn

Facts about Saturn

• If you could find a bathtub big enough, Saturn would float in it.
• control the width of its rings.

How big is the Saturn?

Saturn is 120,536 km or 9.449 Earths in diameter at the equator. It is only 108,728 km or 8.552 Earths in diameter from pole to pole. It is bigger at the equator because it spins fast enough to budge out.

What is the surface of Saturn like?

Saturn has no surface that you could stand on without going deep into its atmosphere. The atmosphere has bands, but they're not as colorful as Jupiter's.

What are Saturn's moons like

Saturn has at least 62 moons. The exact number of Saturn's moons will never be known because of the Saturn's rings

Shepherd moons

There are small potato shaped moons in or near Saturn's rings. They control the ring particles with their gravity. That is why they are called shepherd moons. Six of them are known and there may be more.

Mimas

Mimas is made mostly of water ice with a little rock. It has a large crater for its size called Herschel. It is 130 km across, making it about a third as big as Mimas.

Enceladus

Enceladus is made of ice. It has smooth areas, cracks and some craters. The smooth areas are younger. Craters there got erased within the past 100 million years.

Tethys

Tethys is an icy moon that has many craters, including the huge Odysseus. It is 400 km across, a quarter as big as Tethys. The crater had become flattened because the icy material doesn't hold its shape as well as rock would. There is also a large valley called Ithaca Chasma. It is 3 to 5 km deep, 100 km wide and 2000 km long, three fourth of the way around Tethys. There are two moons, Telesto and Calypso, that share Tethys's orbit. Telesto is ahead of Tethys and Calypso is behind it..

Dione

Dione is made of lots of ice and maybe some rock in the core. It has lots of craters. The craters are flattened because the ice doesn't hold their shape as well as rock. One side has bright white lines that are cliffs made of ice. There is one moon, Helene, that is ahead of Dione in its orbit.

Rhea

Rhea is an icy moon similar to Dione with some rock in the core. It has many craters on one side and the other side has some bright white icy areas.

Titan

Titan is the largest moon of Saturn and the second largest one in the solar system. It is the only moon in the solar system that has a thick atmosphere. The atmosphere is made of nitrogen, methane and various organic compounds. Its surface has light and dark areas and few craters. However, the Cassini probe discovered a huge crater, 440 km across, with its radar. The Huygens probe was carried by Cassini. It got released from Cassini and landed on Titan. It sent back pictures of Titan's surface. Titan has a gigantic atmosphere, extending hundreds of kilometers above the surface.

Hyperion

Hyperion is made of water ice with a little rock. It is potato shaped. It wobbles instead of rotating in the same way other moons do.

Iapetus

Iapetus it made of ice with a little rock. It has a light area, Roncevaux Terra with craters. There is a big dark area called Cassini Regio that covers half of Iapetus. The dark material may be made of organic compounds. Some of it is on the bottom of craters. Some huge craters and a ridge had been discovered in Cassini Regio by the Cassini probe. The ridge stretches 1300 km along the equator It is up to 20 km high, which is over 20 times higher than Mount Everest.

Phoebe

Phoebe is made of ice and rock, but looks dark because it has a layer dark material on the outside. It also looks rough.

Other moons

There are two groups of small outer moons. Phoebe is part of the outermost group.

How long is a day on Saturn

One year on Saturn is 29.45 or about 29 and a half Earth years long. That is 10,758 Earth days!

A Saturn year is almost exactly equal to two and half Jupiter years. Thus after every two Saturn years, Jupiter has completed five full orbits about the Sun. So after 59 years, Saturn and Jupiter will be back in nearly the same position. When the orbits of two planets are simple ratios of each other, it is called a resonance.

What is Saturn made of?

Saturn has a rocky core. Around the core, there is liquid metallic hydrogen. On top of that is gaseous hydrogen. There is no place where the hydrogen suddenly turns from a gas to a liquid.

The gaseous hydrogen is part of Saturn's atmosphere. Other gases there include helium and some other gases. There may be rain made of helium falling through the hydrogen.

How much would Saturn's gravity pull on me?

If you were floating close to the cloud tops of Saturn, it would pull you down with a force only a little stronger than the force of Earth's gravity. The effects of Saturn's large radius and its mass almost cancel out, making the force only a little bigger.

Saturn's rapid rotation causes the equator to bulge out. This would also cancel out about 10 percent of gravity's force on you if you were at the equator. The amount of this counteraction becomes lower the closer you get to the poles

Who is Saturn named after?

Saturn is named after the Roman god of corn, nature and agriculture.