Saturn

Saturn is so beautiful with a band of multi-coloured rings around it. This band of rings is about 1 km thick. Each ring is made up of billions of pieces of ice / icy rock - some are as small as a pebble and some as big as a house.

Like Jupiter, Saturn is made up mostly of gases so a spaceship could not land on it. Saturn has more than 18 moons - a few smaller ones have not been named yet. The main ones are outside the rings.

Titan is Saturn's biggest moon - it is bigger than Mercury. Enceladus is a moon covered with ice and is the shiniest body on our solar system. Saturn is the second largest planet in our solar system. It takes 29.5 Earth years to orbit the Sun.

Saturn rotates once on its axis about every 10 hours and 40 minutes. Except at its poles, all its winds blow only eastward. Saturn is named after the Roman god of agriculture, the old father of Jupiter. Because it travels slowly and steadily across the sky, it reminds people of an old man.