The planet Saturn is my favorite object in
the night sky, no question.
When I bought my first telescope at age thirteen,
Saturn was the first planet I looked at.
To actually see the planet's rings, *right
there in the eyepiece*, was nothing short
of life changing.
The planet is stunning to view, and the facts
about Saturn are just as amazing.
Even if sometimes they are little confusing.
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Saturn is less dense than water.
If you could find a pool big enough, Saturn
would float.
You might think it's easy to figure out how
fast a planet is rotating, but Saturn was
tricky because it's a gas giant.
They had to measure how fast Saturn's magnetic
field was turning to get an answer, at a jaunty
ten hours, thirty-two minutes and thirty-five
seconds.
This high speed rotation causes the planet
to flatten out into an oblate spheroid, making
the distance from the center to the poles
only fifty-four-thousand kilometers, while
the distance to the equator is sixty-thousand-three-hundred
kilometers.
That's a difference of six-thousand-three-hundred
kilometers.
The first person to observe Saturn with a
telescope was Galileo.
He saw that the planet and described strange
"ears" on either side.
He thought they might be moons stuck to the
side of the planet.
It wasn't until half a century later, Huygens
used a better telescope, and was able to resolve
the rings.
But you don't need a telescope to see Saturn,
it's one of the brighter objects in the night
sky, with a bright, yellowish color.
You'll need good binoculars, or a telescope
to make out the rings, though.
We're so familiar with the famous images of
Saturn captured by spacecraft, it's hard to
believe the are only four who have made the
journey: Pioneer Two, Voyager One, Voyager
Two, and now NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
Currently, there are no other future missions
planned.
Saturn goes through seasons, just like Earth.
And from our perspective, we see the tilt
of the rings changing over its thirty-year
trip around the Sun.
Sometimes the rings are wide around the planet,
and other times they're a thin line, and almost
disappear completely.
These rings are very old... or maybe they're
young.
We actually don't know.
It's possible that Saturn's rings were formed
recently by a smashed moon, or maybe they
formed in place, at the beginning of the Solar
System billions of years ago.
Astronomers just don't have enough evidence
either way yet.
Saturn has at least sixty-two moons.
There's Titan, the second largest moon in
the Solar System, with a dense atmosphere,
weather systems, and lakes of liquid methane.
Mimas, which looks eerily like the Death Star.
There are big moons and tiny moons, and more
are discovered all the time.
Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons might contain
life.
It's spewing water ice into space from its
southern pole, which means that there could
be liquid water beneath the surface.
As wherever we find water on Earth, we find
life.
Those are my favourite facts about Saturn
and its moons, I hope you find the planet
as fascinating as I do.
