What new information has been discovered about the sixth planet from the Sun?
Saturn is the second largest planet after Jupiter and also orbits a little further out as the sixth planet from the Sun. Saturn was named after the Roman god of the harvest.
One Saturn day equals 10 1/2 hours on Earth. This means that Saturn is the second fastest spinning planet in the solar system, again playing second fiddle to Jupiter. One Saturn year equals 29 1/2 Earth years. Saturn orbits 9.5 AU from the Sun. 1 AU equals 93 million miles, or the distance from the Sun to Earth; therefore, Saturn is nine and a half times further from the Sun than Earth is.
Saturn has been visited by many spacecraft, including Pioneer 11, Voyagers 1 and 2, Cassini, and Huygens.
Saturn is categorized as a gas giant planet, with its composition consisting mostly of hydrogen and some helium. Saturn is the least dense of all the planets: If it were placed in a giant ocean, it would float. Its atmosphere gives it an ochre color (yellowish-orange) although cloud mixing through storms may tinge it paler toward white.
Saturn has 34 named moons and other small moons are being found all the time. The largest moon, Titan, is notable for its thick atmosphere. Titan is the second largest moon in the solar system and a good possibility for a place in which life could have taken hold. An "icy volcano" was recently found on Titan, signifying warm watery conditions, which is considered an excellent medium for life to evolve in.
The most striking feature about the planet is visible through even the smallest telescope: its magnificent rings. The three widest rings, the A, B, and C rings, can be seen from Earth-bound telescopes. The Cassini Division is a well-known gap between the A and B rings. The rings are made of ice and rock particles orbiting the planet. These icy chunks range in size from pebbles to trucks. Although the rings are very wide across, in thickness they are very thin. When Saturn tilts in its orbit it changes the angle from which we view the rings, sometimes opening them up in their full glory, sometimes tilting so that they are seen edge-on, causing the rings to virtually disappear from view. The next time the rings will be seen from edge-on is 2009.
The Cassini spacecraft has made a number of remarkable discoveries in late 2006. It found a new faint ring and a massive swirling storm. The giant storm appears hurricane-like in that it sports a clear eye. The winds whip around the storm at 350 miles per hour. The storm is nearly as big as Earth and lies right over the South Pole, which is one of the warmer places in Saturn's atmosphere. It differs from Jupiter's Great Red Spot (GRS) in that the GRS has no eye and exists at midlatitudes. The GRS is larger, at about three times the size of Earth.
Another odd feature in the atmosphere of Saturn is the hexagon cloud formation near the North Pole. First photographed by Voyagers 1 and 2, it has recently been photographed by Cassini. At 15,000 miles across, four Earths could fit inside this hexagonal atmospheric phenomenon. You can watch a movie of the circulating hexagonal feature at NASA's website.
For more on the solar system, follow the links below.
Sun Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Uranus Neptune
