Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius about nine times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth, but with its larger volume Saturn is over 95 times more massive.
Distance from Sun: 1.434 billion km Radius: 58,232 km Orbital period: 29 years Mass: 5.683 × 10^26 kg (95.16 M⊕) Moons: Enceladus, Titan, Dione, Mimas, Tethys, Iapetus, Rhea, MORE Did you know: Saturn was known to ancient civilizations, including the Babylonians and Far Eastern observers.
Saturn
The sixth planet from the sun is known most for its rings. When Galileo Galilei first studied Saturn in the early 1600s, he thought it was an object with three parts. Not knowing he was seeing a planet with rings, the stumped astronomer entered a small drawing — a symbol with one large circle and two smaller ones — in his notebook, as a noun in a sentence describing his discovery. More than 40 years later, Christiaan Huygens proposed that they were rings. The rings are made of ice and rock. Scientists are not yet sure how they formed. The gaseous planet is mostly hydrogen and helium. It has numerous moons.
Discovery: Known to the ancients and visible to the naked eye Named for: Roman god of agriculture Diameter: 74,900 miles (120,500 km) Orbit: 29.5 Earth years Day: About 10.5 Earth hours Related: More Saturn Facts Saturn Pictures NASA Solar System Exploration: Saturn
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