Saturn

By Ola Smith

This is a full colour view of Saturn and it’s rings taken from Voyager 2 on July 21 1981.

The Discovery of Saturn

This planet, was known by the ancients and no one knows when or how it was found.

It got it’s name from the Ancient Greeks, who named it after the Greek god of agriculture and time.

The Cassini spacecraft, launched in 1997 to study Saturn and its rings and satellites, captured this natural color image as it approached the planet in 2004.

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun. It’s distance from the sun (in Astronomical Units) is 9.539. In kilometers is 1,426,725,400. It takes Saturn 10,760 Earth days to orbit the Sun, and the length of one day on Saturn is 10 hours and 15 minutes.

Saturn’s Measurements

Saturn’s mass is 5.68e26kg and it’s volume is 827,130,000,000,000 km3. It’s Equatorial Circumference* is 378,675 km and the gravity is 10.4 m/s2. Saturn’s mean density is 0.70 g/cm3. The weight of objects on Saturn is totally different than on Earth. For example: If you weighed 100lbs on Earth, on Saturn you would weigh 106.4lbs!

* A central boundary

This is an image of a storm on Saturn taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Saturn’s Composition and Atmosphere

Saturn’s core is made up of nickel-iron and rock. It’s surface is mostly liquid, hydrogen and rock. The major gases of Saturn’s atmosphere are hydrogen, helium, acetylene and propane. The minor gases are ammonia, methane and ethane.

Saturn’s Surface Conditions

Saturn’s surface temperature is about -170˚C. Saturn’s surface is not a solid surface, and the pressure is so powerful, that it squeezes gas into liquid!

The weather on Saturn is freezing because it is so far away from the sun, and it’s very windy with lots of storms.

Titan

Titan is Saturn’s fifteenth moon, and largest. It was long thought that Titan was the largest satellite(moon) in the solar system but recently, observations have shown that Titan's atmosphere is so thick, that it’s solid surface is slightly smaller than Ganymede’s, which makes it the second largest moon in the Solar System. Titan is larger in diameter than Mercury and larger and more massive than Pluto. The Earth’s atmosphere, extends about 60 kilometers into space, while Titan’s extends 600 kilometers, ten times more!

This shows four images of Titan's surface taken from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Saturn’s Rings

Galileo Galilei discovered Saturn’s rings in 1610. There are thousands of rings made up of billions of particles of ice and rock. The particles can be the size of a grain of sugar to a size of a house. Each ring orbits at a different speed around the planet. Saturn’s rings are the biggest of all planets’ and the most spectacular.

This is a false color image of the unlit side of Saturn's rings taken from Voyager 1. B Ring details are clearly see in this image

Saturn’s MoonsSaturn is believed to have sixty moons. Here is a list of all of Saturn’s moons:

1. Mimas 2. Enceladus 3. Tethys 4. Dione 5. Rhea 6. Titan7. Hyperion 8. Iapetus 9. Erriapus 10. Phoebe 11. Janus 12. Epimetheus 13. Helene 14. Telesto 15. Calypso 16. Kiviuq 17. Atlas 18. Prometheus 19. Pandora 20. Pan

21. Ymir 22. Paaliaq 23. Tarvos 24. Ijiraq 25. Suttungr 26. Mundilfari 27. Albiorix 28. Skathi 29. Siarnaq 30. Thrymr 31. Narvi 32. Methone 33. Pallene 34. Polydeuces 35. Daphnis 36. Aegir 37. Bebhionn 38. Bergelmir 39. Bestla 40. Farbauti

41. Fenrir 42. Fornjot 43. Hati 44. Hyrokkin 45. Kari 46. Loge 47. Skoll 48. Surtur 49. S/2004 S7 50. S/2004 S12 51. S/2004 S13 52. S/2004 S17 53. S/2006 S1 54. S/2006 S3 55. Greip 56. Jarnsaxa 57. Tarqeq 58. S/2007 S2 59. S/2007 S3 60. Anthe

Saturn Explorations

Pioneer 11 – September 1979Voyager 1 – November 1980Voyager 2 – August 1981Cassini-Huygens spacecraft – July 1 2004

Pioneer 11 image of Saturn

Thank you for watching and listening to my presentation!

Links

http://www.cnes.fr/web/CNES-en/1126-the-exploration-of-saturn.phphttp://www.solarsystem.nasa.govhttp://www.nineplanets.org/http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/multimedia/display.cfm?IM_ID=167http://learn.arc.nasa.gov/planets/6/index.htmlhttp://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/our_solar_system/solar_system.html&edu=highhttp://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/weight/http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/index.htmlhttp://www.ask.com/About Science Book 1