Top 10 Amazing Facts about Saturn

Top 10 Amazing Facts about Saturn

With the exception of Earth, Saturn is arguably the most mesmerizing planet in our solar system, from the famous rings to its astonishing 62 moons. Let's look at the top 10 amazing facts about Saturn.

1. Roman God of Time - Actually he was the god of a lot of things including farming freedom and weekends. Well maybe not the weekend's specifically but Saturday gets its name from him. Saturn shares similarities with the Greek Titan Kronos but Romans declared Saturn to be their own special God. He the patron deity of the city had a temple in the forum and guarded the Roman Treasury. Romans were so keen on him that they celebrated a December holiday Saturnalia which shared similarities with modern-day Christmas.

2. The Discovery of Saturn - Saturn is one of those planets that aren't really new, yeah we know it's billions of years old but we mean that people have known about it since antiquity, that's because Saturn's large size makes it noticeable to the naked eye on certain nights. Astronomers noted Saturn as far back as the early first millennium BC ancient. Chinese Greek and Indian scholars actually incorporated the planet into their Pantheon. In fact the 2nd-century Greco-roman astronomer Ptolemy even came up with a calculation to Saturn's orbit using earth and the Sun as base points.

3. Saturn has an Unorthodox North Pole - You may imagine a North Pole be something circular or misshapen but not on Saturn. Saturn's North Pole is surrounded by a near-perfect hexagon at about 20,000 miles or 32,000 kilometers wide Saturn's Pole is large and full of swirls or stormy winds that travel at about 200 miles or 320 km/h. The swirls are due to the low friction atmosphere, how the hexagon is formed well is still a mystery.

4. How Big is Saturn - Saturn is one of four gas giants in our solar system. Saturn is so gigantic in fact that it could fit 764 earths inside of it. It also has the distinction of being the second-largest planet in our solar system. The planet measures 75 thousand miles or 120,000 kilometers in diameter nine times wider than Earth's because of its gassy state you can't actually stand on Saturn there's simply nothing on the surface to support you. 96% of the planet is made up of hydrogen, a pretty unstable element to begin with there is a solid core in theory at least but no one is certain how big it is.

5. How Far Away is Saturn - Saturn is very far away from us. It's the sixth planet from our Sun so you'd expect it to be way out there depending on where it is in its orbit, Saturn could be anywhere from eight hundred forty million to nine hundred thirty million miles from the Sun. For the rest of the world that's roughly 1.3 5 to 1.5 million kilometers from our solar capital. For our Earth-centric viewers you're selfish but you that's nine and a half to ten times the distance between Earth and the Sun.

6. Saturn is Surrounded by Moons - Saturn has 62 Moons. If we're going off of NASA's official numbers each is named after deities and mythological beings and not just Greek and Roman there's a shock from the annuit culture and Beijing from Celtic myth. They're pretty diverse in name and size the largest and perhaps most popular of them is Titan, which is bigger than the planet Mercury or Pluto. On the other side of the spectrum is the smallest - which can fit inside the state of Texas. Then there are the shapes - spherical, cylindrical.

7. Enceladus is Saturn's Brightest moon - Some moons stand out more than others with Enceladus specifically being the doesn't need the spotlight. it's the brightest object in our solar system thanks to its white icy surface. The surface is freezing at temperatures of -330 degrees Fahrenheit or -201 degrees Celsius. But there is one area that's not quite that cold though the South Pole. That warm section emits fountains of ice that last hundreds of miles into space. The combination of ice and warmer temperatures has astronomers speculating about the possibility of life.

8. Saturn's Moon Titan is Wild - Enceladus has gotten the recent buzz but Titan still gets the most attention. Titan is a wild place I mean like spring break at Cancun wild this orange moon is lined with earth lined terrain including mountains deserts and riverbeds. There have been two unmanned missions to Titan in the past 20 years. Each one giving a more vivid picture of the giant moon. While Titan looks similar to earth, it doesn't look to be habitable because of its richness in methane, which when mixed with oxygen can be a combustible disaster. Of course, it's freezing temperatures of -280 degrees Fahrenheit or -173 degrees Celsius don't help either.

9. Defining the Rings of Saturn - we already mentioned that ancient civilizations were familiar with Saturn but none actually saw the planet at least not clearly. It wasn't until 1610 that Galileo Galilei actually saw the planet in more vivid detail. The telescope of that period didn't allow him to see much but he noticed a halo that he couldn't explain. About 50 years later a Dutch astronomer named Christian Huygens apologies to the Dutch theorized that such halos were because of planetary rings. Following Huygens in 1675 Giovanni Cassini confirmed the theory when he identified a gap in the halo. In honor of both Huygens and Cassini NASA named its Saturn space mission after the two men. The mission that provided the most detailed image yet of our solar systems second largest world.

10. Composition of Saturn's Rings - Let's get to the most interesting part of the Rings. Saturn's beautiful and dazzling rings are mostly bits of ice pulled together by complex gravitational forces. The composition of these particles and the type of light shining at them gives off the stunning colors we're familiar with. Scientists counts seven layers of rings lettered A through G in order of discovery. Like its moons Saturn's rings are very diverse in a scale ranging in thickness from 30 feet or 10 meters. All the way up to 19,000 miles or 30,000 kilometers despite what many cartoons may say you can't skate on them.

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