Additional Data:

Diameter:

114.632 km

Average distance to the sun:

1.434.000.000 km

The mass of 1 kg weighs on Saturn:

1.130 g

One year on Saturn lasts:

29 years 166 days

One day on Saturn lasts:

10 hours 47 minutes

Temperature on the surface:

-140 °C

Orbital velocity:

9,69 km/s

Orbital inclination:

2,4845 °

Orbital excentricity:

0,0542

Density:

0,687 kg/m³

Gravitational accelleration:

10,44 m/s²

Escape velocity:

35,5 km/s

Tilt of the rotational axis:

26,73 °

Number of moons:

83

Number of rings:

7

 

Saturn is the second largest gas planet in our solar system. It has the highest recognition value of all planets because it is surrounded by an extensive ring system.

The planet Saturn was mentioned as early as 700 BC by the astronomers of the Assyrians. Centuries later, the Romans named it after their god of agriculture. Saturn can be observed with the naked eye. Its eye-catching rings can be seen with a simple telescope or binoculars.

Saturn's interior is divided into several layers, and at its center there is a core of rock. Its gas envelope consists of 93% hydrogen, 6% helium and 1% other gases. Similar to Jupiter, Saturn does not have a solid surface, but its gas envelope of hydrogen becomes denser and denser towards the core, so that the hydrogen changes from the gaseous to the liquid state and shortly before the core even into metallic hydrogen. Convection – the flow of metallic hydrogen around the core – creates Saturn's magnetic field. It is not as large as Jupiter's and is reminiscent of Earth's magnetic field because of its orientation along the planet's axis of rotation.

Saturn's atmosphere consists largely of hydrogen. The planet's clouds are made up of methane, ethane and ammonia. The few clouds that can be seen are usually whitish in color. Unlike Jupiter, there are no centuries-old storms to be seen on Saturn. Major cyclones occur every 30 years. Winds on Saturn reach speeds of 1,800 km/h. On Earth, the highest wind speeds are between 500 and 600 km/h and occur in the upper atmosphere.

Unlike Jupiter, Saturn is very light for its size. Although it weighs 95 earth masses, it has a lower density than water in terms of volume. If there were an ocean big enough for Saturn, it could float in it.

In 1610, Galileo Galilei saw Saturn's rings for the first time, but he could not yet interpret them correctly. It was not until 1655 that Christiaan Huygens succeeded in doing so with a better telescope. In 1859, James Clerk Maxwell calculated that the rings could not possibly be solid but must consist of many thousands of particles.

Saturn's rings are made up of chunks of ice and rock ranging from the size of a grain of sand to the size of a small car. The highly visible rings A, B, C, D and F, together with the rings G and E, reach a width of 393,000 km, which is slightly more than the distance between the Earth and the Moon. The rings are divided by so-called divisions. These are gaps between the rings in which there is hardly any material. Many of Saturn's 83 known moons move in these divisions, keeping them clear. They are referred to as Shepherd moons because their gravitational pull pushes smaller chunks into either a higher or lower orbit. To this day, it is not known what exactly caused the formation of Saturn's rings. In addition, it is still unclear whether the rings will remain or will one day crash into Saturn.

So far, 83 moons have been discovered around Saturn. Large moons such as Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, Hyperion, Iapetus and Titan have been known for some time. However, most of them were only discovered in the 20th century with large telescopes and space probes. Saturn's moon Titan is particularly interesting. With a diameter of 5,150 km, it is the second largest moon in the solar system and larger than the Earth's moon. It has a rock core and a mantle of water ice. The special thing about Titan is that it has a dense atmosphere in which the pressure is only slightly higher than on Earth. It consists of 98% nitrogen and 2% other gases, including a high proportion of methane. Temperatures on Titan are around -179 °C. On the surface, thanks to atmospheric pressure, there are rivers, lakes and rain that consist of liquid methane, water on Titan exists only in the form of ice. This behaves there in the same way as rocks on earth. In 2040, NASA plans to send a spacecraft to Titan, which will then deploy an autonomous submarine to explore these lakes.