Saturn, The Planet

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Saturn, The Planet
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Basic Fact Dates

• Saturn was found by Galileo in 1610 with a
  telescope. Other ancient civilizations had seen
  it before with the naked eye.
• Its hard to observe Saturn because of the plane
  on which the rings are tilted (because we pass
  through them)
• It was not until 1659 that Cristiaan Huygeens
  correctly IRed the geometry of the rings
• Diameter 120,536 km (equatorial)
• Mass 5.68e26 kgGravity9.05 (m/sec2)
• Atmosphere Methane, Hydrogen 75, and Helium 25
• (Day) Temperature -125C
• Saturn the 2nd largest 90x larger than Earth

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Rings and Moons

• There are 7 major
• ring divisions, and
• are made out of
• ice and ice-rock.
• The rocks range in
• Size between a
• fingernail to a car.
• The rings are kept
• in place by the gravity
• of moons.
• There are 33 discovered
• moons 18 named.

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Saturns Man-made Satellites and Orbit

• It takes 29 years to
• orbit the sun once.
• Travels
• 1,426,000,000km for
• once single revolution.
• Voyager Missions found winds, magnetic field,
  auroras and lightning on the planet similar to
  Jupiter
• Robot spacecraft Cassini is still in orbit
  collecting photographic data.

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Saturn From Earth
From Earth, Saturn appears through an optical
telescope like a blue and white sphere with rings
around it.
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Saturn at Night
This is what Saturn looks like at night. In
contrast to the human-made lights that cause the
nighttime side of Earth to glow faintly, Saturn's
faint nighttime glow is primarily caused by
sunlight reflecting off of its own majestic rings