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Saturn – Planet · Gas giant
Image: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI / color composite by Gordan Ugarkovic · Public domain
🪐 Planets · The Giants

Saturn

Planet · Gas giant

Saturn is famous for its rings: billions of chunks of ice and rock, from dust grains to house-sized boulders. The rings are about 280,000 km wide but in most places only about 10 metres thick.

  • 116,460 kmAbout 9.1 Earths would fit side by side across it.
  • 29.4 yearsYear
  • Mostly water iceRings
🔭 Find it in the sky

Take a closer look

A six-sided storm

Around Saturn’s north pole, a jet stream of fast winds flows in an almost perfect hexagon. Each of its six sides is longer than Earth is wide. Nothing like it exists on any other planet we know, and scientists use computer models and lab experiments with spinning fluids to understand how it keeps its shape.

A moon that sprays water

The small icy moon Enceladus shoots tall jets of water vapour and ice from cracks near its south pole. The water comes from an ocean hidden under the ice. The Cassini spacecraft flew straight through the spray and found salt and carbon-based molecules, and some of the spray feeds one of Saturn’s rings.

Flying on Titan

Titan, Saturn’s biggest moon, has air thicker than Earth’s and gravity weaker than our Moon’s. A person there could strap on wings and fly by flapping their arms. NASA is preparing a drone-like lander called Dragonfly to hop between spots on Titan and study its chemistry in the 2030s.

Size it up

EarthSaturn

About 9.1 Earths would fit side by side across it. Both are drawn to the same scale.

How we found out

  1. 1610

    Galileo sees strange “ears” on Saturn but can’t work out what they are.

  2. 1655

    Christiaan Huygens explains they are a ring and discovers the giant moon Titan.

  3. 1675

    Giovanni Cassini spots a gap in the rings – now called the Cassini Division.

  4. 2004–2017

    The Cassini spacecraft orbits Saturn for 13 years. Its Huygens probe lands on Titan in 2005.

  5. 2025

    Astronomers announce 128 newly found small moons, taking Saturn’s total to 274.

🤔 Something to wonder about

Is it raining anywhere on Saturn’s moons?

See it yourself

A steady, golden “star”. Even a small telescope shows the rings – a view people never forget.

Got it?

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