Saturn is the 6th planet from the Sun
and the 2nd largest planet in our solar system after Jupiter
adorned with
thousands of beautiful ringlets Saturn
is unique among the planets it is not
the only planet to have rings but none
are as spectacular or as complicated as
Saturn
the rings are made of billions of pieces of ice dust and rocks
9 Earth's
side-by-side would almost span Saturn's
diameter that doesn't include Saturn's
rings
Saturn orbits at a distance of about 886 million miles from the Sun
Saten takes about 10.7 hours to rotate on its axis once
& 29 earth years to orbit the Sun
Saturn is a gas-giant planet and
therefore does not have a solid surface
like Earth's but it might have a solid
core somewhere in there Saturn's
atmosphere is made up mostly of hydrogen
and helium
Saturn has the most spectacular ring system with 7 rings
and several gaps and divisions between them
Saturn has 53 known moons with an
additional 9 moons awaiting
confirmation of their discovery
that is a total of 62 moons Saturn cannot
support life as we know it but some of
Saturn's moons have conditions that
might support life
Saturn's moon Phoebe orbits in the opposite direction
the Sun looks 10 times smaller on
Saturn than it looks on earth
Saturn can be seen with the naked eye it is the
5th brightest object in the solar
system and is also easily studied
Saturn has a density of 0.687 gram/cubic cm
Just for comparison
water is 1 gram / CC & the earth is
5.52
since Saturn is less dense than water it would actually
float like an apple if you could find a pool large enough
4 missions have visited Saturn Pioneer 11 and Voyagers 1 and 2 flew by
but Cassini orbits
Saturn 294 times from 2004 to 2017 the
Cassini spacecraft was intentionally
vaporized in Saturn's atmosphere in 2017
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