SaturnThe Lord of the Rings

Mike SwansonMarch 2004

Saturn History• One of the 5 planets

known since ancient times

• First to view Saturn through a telescope was Galileo in the early 1600s – but his telescope was so poor that he could not see the rings

• In the mid-1600s Christiaan Huygens was the first to see the rings and Saturn’s largest moon

• In the late 1600s Giovanni Cassini was the first to see the darkest division in the rings and four additional moons

Saturn Facts• 6th planet from the Sun• Diameter of 75,200 mi

(121,000 km) – 9 times larger than the Earth

• 1 day on Saturn is about 11 hours

• 1 year on Saturn is 29.5 Earth years

• Average distance from the Sun is about 9 times further than Earth

• Over 30 moons – the largest is called Titan and astronomers think it is possible that molecular life exists below its thick clouds

• One of the four “gas giants” of our solar system – mostly made of hydrogen and helium gas

Saturn’s Rings

Saturn’s RingsPhases through the years

Cassini/Huygens Mission to Saturn

• Launched by NASA in October 1997

• Passed Jupiter in December 2000

• Begins orbiting Saturn in July 2004

• Cassini is an orbiter which will study Saturn’s atmosphere, rings, magnetic fields and more

• Huygens is a probe that will land on Saturn’s moon Titan – the first spacecraft from Earth to land on another planet’s moon

• Joint venture by NASA (Cassini orbiter) and the European Space Agency (Huygens Probe)

http://jpl.nasa.gov/

But what does Saturn look like when viewed through a

telescope???

The images in this presentation are copyrighted by NASA.

For additional information and links to many other resources, visit the Students for the Exploration and

Development of Space (SEDS) web site:

http://www.seds.org