Planet Saturn: Facts and Features

• Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest in the solar system.
• Saturn's width is nine times that of Earth.
• Over 700 Earths could fit inside Saturn.
• The planet is named after Saturnus, the Roman god of agriculture and wealth, and father of Jupiter.
• Sunlight takes 80 minutes to reach Saturn from the Sun.
• Like Jupiter, Saturn consists mostly of hydrogen and helium.
• Being a gas giant, Saturn lacks a true surface.
• Saturn is composed of swirling gases and liquids in the deeper layers and has a thick atmosphere.
• Saturn's gravity is about 1.08 times that of Earth.
• An object weighing 100 lbs on Earth would weigh 108 lbs on Saturn.

Saturn's North Pole

• Saturn's north pole has a six-sided jet stream.
• The hexagon-shaped pattern was first observed by the Voyager I spacecraft and later by the Cassini spacecraft.
• The six-sided jet stream can fit two Earths across.
• A massive, rotating storm is at the center of the jet stream.
• The weather feature does not exist anywhere else in the solar system.

Saturn's Rotation and Orbit

• Saturn has the second-shortest day in the solar system, lasting about 10.7 or 11 hours.
• Saturn completes an orbit around the Sun in about 29.4 Earth years (10,756 Earth days).
• As of June 8, 2023, Saturn has 146 moons.
• Saturn's largest moon, Titan, has an Earth-like cycle of liquids flowing across its surface and has a thick atmosphere.
• Titan is larger than Mercury and is the second largest moon in the solar system.
• Enceladus has a global ocean under a thick, icy shell.
• Enceladus and Titan are high-priority science destinations for future deep space missions.

Saturn's Rings

• Saturn's rings are made of pieces of comets, asteroids, or shattered moons, torn apart by Saturn's gravity.
• The rings consist of billions of small chunks of ice and rock coated with other materials, including dust.
• Most ring particles are icy grains, ranging from tiny, dust-sized to chunks as big as a house, with a few particles as large as mountains.
• How Saturn's rings formed is currently unknown.
• The rings are thought to have something to do with Saturn's moons.
• The rings could be made from broken pieces of moons.
• The rings may also be made from material left over when Saturn first formed.
• From a distance, Saturn appears to have seven large rings, each named with a letter of the alphabet.
• The rings were named in the order they were discovered.
• The first ring discovered was named the A ring, and it is not the closest or farthest ring from Saturn.
• Some rings are close together, while others have large gaps between them.
• The rings circle Saturn at very high speeds.
• The ring system is divided into seven groups of rings.
• These rings are as wide as four and a half Earths.
• The rings stay on track and intact due to Saturn's smallest moons, called Shepherding Moons.
• These tiny moons orbit between the rings and use their gravity to shape the rings.
• Pandora and Prometheus are examples of shepherd moons that keep the F-ring narrow.

Saturn's Exploration

• Four robotic spacecraft have visited Saturn.
• Pioneer 11 was the first spacecraft to study Saturn up close, with the first close look in September 1979.
• Pioneer 11 discovered Saturn's F ring and a new moon.
• NASA's twin Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 followed up with flybys nine months apart in 1980 and 1981.
• Voyager 1 revealed the intricate structure of the ring system.
• Voyager 2 provided more detailed images and documented the thinness of some of the rings.
• The international Cassini mission arrived in 2004 and orbited 294 times.
• Cassini studied Saturn for 13 years and was transformed into an atmospheric probe.
• Cassini plunged into Saturn's atmosphere in September 2017, sending science data back to Earth.
• Its final five orbits enabled scientists to directly sample Saturn's atmosphere.
• Cassini carried ESA's Huygens Probe, which landed on Saturn's moon Titan in 2005.
• Huygens Probe was the first spacecraft to make a soft landing on the surface of another planet's moon, Titan.