Saturn

Saturn

• The second largest planet.
• Saturn has over 1000 rings made up of rock and ice encircling the planet. These rings are thought to be material leftover from Saturn's formation, possibly material that didn't completely coalesce into a moon.
• Saturn rings are almost a kilometer in thickness!
• Saturn's rings are only 10's of millions of years old as compared to Saturn itself which is 4.5 billion years old.
• There are at least 7 distinct rings. The A, B and C rings are much larger than the others which cannot be seen with an average telescope, only by spacecraft images.
• There is a gap between the A and B rings called the Cassini Division named for the man who discovered it. The Cassini Division was created when a moon orbiting Saturn cleared a path through the debris in the rings when they were first formed.
• The ring debris stays in ring form because of the gravitational fields put upon them by Saturn's moons
• The ring edges are groomed by these moons; the edges are kept sharp when these moons circle them and 'clean up' the debris that has drifted away from the main ring.
• The winds on Saturn can reach up to 1770 km/h at its equator. The most powerful hurricanes ever recorded on Earth only reached winds of around 300 km/h!
• Like Jupiter it has no solid surface, it is also made up of thick gases, Hydrogen and Helium also.
• Saturn's upper atmosphere is 94% hydrogen and 6% Helium.
• It takes Saturn 30 years to orbit the sun!
• It takes the image of Saturn (the light) 84 minutes to reach Earth!
• 1%; The amount of sunlight Saturn gets as compared to Earth's. One reason for it's -140 degree C temperature!
• It has 18 named, major moons. The major ones are outside Saturn's rings. Titan, Saturn's largest moon is the only moon known to have a dense atmosphere and is larger than both the planet Mercury and the planet Pluto!
• Saturn also is believed to have a solid inner core.
• It was named after the old father of the Roman God Jupiter because of how slow and steady it moves across the sky.