50 Fun Facts About Saturn

Where does Saturn rank in distance from the Sun?

It is the second-largest planet, after Jupiter, and the farthest one easily seen with the naked eye.

Saturn is the only planet in the Solar System with which property?

Its average density is 0.69 g/cm3, about 30% less than water, so in principle it would float.

Saturn's rings are made mainly of what?

There is a little rocky debris and a peppering of about 7% amorphous carbon.

Roughly how thick are Saturn's main rings on average?

They stretch out over 120,000 km from the planet yet are thinner than many buildings are tall.

Who first recognised Saturn's rings for what they were, in 1655?

Galileo in 1610 had taken the bulges for two moons flanking the planet.

What did Galileo mistake Saturn's rings for in 1610?

His telescope was too weak to resolve them; Huygens settled the matter forty-five years later.

Who discovered the largest gap in Saturn's rings, in 1675, and has it named after him?

He also found the moons Iapetus, Rhea, Tethys and Dione.

How long does Saturn take to orbit the Sun?

That is 10,759 Earth days, forming a near 5:2 resonance with Jupiter's orbit.

Saturn is about how many times more massive than Earth?

Jupiter is 318 Earth masses; together the two hold 92% of all planetary mass in the Solar System.

What geometric shape surrounds Saturn's north pole in a persistent cloud pattern?

Each side is about 14,500 km, longer than Earth's diameter; it was first spotted in Voyager images.

Saturn's winds are the second fastest of any planet. Which planet's are faster?

Voyager measured peak Saturnian winds of 500 m/s, or 1,800 km/h.

Saturn is the most oblate planet. Its equatorial radius exceeds its polar radius by over what?

Fast rotation plus low density bulges the equator out to 60,268 km against 54,364 km at the poles.

What unusual process may help Saturn radiate 2.5 times more energy than it receives from the Sun?

Falling helium droplets release heat by friction; some models even suggest diamond rain.

Saturn's core is thought to reach roughly what temperature?

It is a 'diffuse core' of rock and ice grading outward through 60% of the planet's radius.

How many known moons does Saturn have, according to the article?

Only 63 have formal names; the count excludes hundreds of moonlets in the rings.

What is the name of Saturn's largest moon, the second-largest moon in the Solar System?

It makes up more than 90% of all the mass orbiting Saturn, rings included.

Saturn's largest moon is unique among moons for having what?

Its surface pressure is 1.45 times Earth's, and its skies are mostly nitrogen and methane.

The lakes and seas on the surface of Saturn's largest moon are filled with what?

It is the only world besides Earth with stable liquid on its surface, though at −180 °C.

Which small icy moon of Saturn shoots geysers of water from its south pole?

Over 100 jets feed Saturn's E ring, and NASA has called it perhaps the most habitable spot beyond Earth.

Most of Saturn's moons are traditionally named after what?

Shakespeare's characters belong to Uranus; Saturn's family tree starts with the Titans, Cronus's siblings.

Which two moons of Saturn did William Herschel discover in 1789?

Mimas has a giant crater named Herschel that gives it a Death Star look.

Which moon, found in 1899, was the first known irregular satellite of Saturn?

William Henry Pickering found it; it also feeds a huge, faint, tilted outer ring.

Small moons such as Pandora and Prometheus are called 'shepherds'. What do they do?

Pan and Atlas raise faint density waves that let scientists weigh the rings.

Roughly how often does Earth cross Saturn's ring plane, making the rings seem to vanish?

Twice a Saturnian year; crossings occurred in 2009 and again in 2025.

Which spacecraft made the first flyby of Saturn, in September 1979?

It passed within 20,000 km of the cloud tops but its pictures were low-resolution.

Which spacecraft entered orbit around Saturn on 1 July 2004 and stayed for 13 years?

It was a joint NASA, ESA and Italian Space Agency mission.

The Huygens probe, released by Cassini, landed on which moon in January 2005?

It was the first landing in the outer Solar System, after a two-and-a-half-hour descent through the haze.

How did the Cassini mission end in September 2017?

The 'Grand Finale' dives between the rings and planet ended with deliberate destruction, to protect the possibly habitable moons.

Cassini measured lightning on Saturn to be roughly how much more powerful than Earth's?

The tracking began in early 2005.

What type of craft is NASA's Dragonfly mission to Saturn's largest moon?

Selected in 2019, it was planned to launch on a Falcon Heavy in 2028 and arrive in 2034, hopping across the surface to look for signs of prebiotic chemistry.

Great White Spots, giant storms on Saturn, appeared in 1876, 1903, 1933, 1960, 1990 and which later year?

They seem to recur roughly once a Saturnian year, in the northern summer.

Saturn's south pole hosts what unusual feature, the only known example in the Solar System?

Temperatures there reach −122 °C against a planetary norm of −185 °C, likely the warmest spot on Saturn.

Saturn is named after the Roman god of what?

He was the father of Jupiter and, in myth, ruled over a lost Golden Age.

Which day of the week is named after Saturn?

Saturni dies, Saturn's Day, is the only English weekday to keep its Roman planetary name.

Which Greek god did the Romans equate with Saturn, and whose name the planet still bears in modern Greek?

The ancient Greeks called the planet itself Phainon, 'the shining one'.

Saturn's astronomical symbol has been traced back to what?

A kappa-rho ligature in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, later given a cross to Christianise it.

What was Saturn called by the ancient Greeks?

Phainon means 'the shining one'; Phaethon was Jupiter and Stilbon was Mercury.

In Hindu astrology, Saturn is known by what name, as a judge of everyone's good and bad deeds?

Shani is one of the nine Navagrahas, and Saturday in India is Shanivar.

Ancient Chinese and Japanese culture designated Saturn as which of the Five Elements' star?

Jupiter was the wood star, Mars fire, Venus metal and Mercury water.

The Roman festival of Saturnalia was held in which month?

It began on the 17th and by the 1st century BC ran for seven days of feasting, gifts and role reversals.

The reign of Saturn was remembered by the Romans as what kind of age?

Hesiod and Ovid described humans enjoying the earth's bounty without labour under his rule.

Kronos was conflated with Chronos, so his devouring of his children became an allegory for what?

That is why Saturn is often drawn as Father Time with a scythe.

Saturn's rings look brightest and best from Earth when the planet is at what configuration?

At opposition Saturn is opposite the Sun in the sky and closest to Earth.

Beyond the main rings lies a sparse ring, tilted 27° and orbiting backwards, named after which moon?

It sits about 12 million km from the planet, far outside the bright rings.

Which two Voyager-era gaps in Saturn's rings are named after astronomers?

The Keeler gap is 42 km wide in the A ring; the Maxwell gap sits in the C ring.

Saturn is the most distant of how many planets easily visible to the naked eye?

Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter are the others; Uranus can just be glimpsed in dark skies.

Which gas makes up about 96% of Saturn's outer atmosphere by volume?

Helium makes up only about 3.25%, far less than its abundance in the Sun, while ammonia crystals in the upper clouds give the planet its pale yellow hue.

How does Saturn's magnetic field strength at its equator compare with Earth's?

At 0.2 gauss it is roughly one twentieth of Jupiter's field, and unusually it is a simple, symmetric dipole.

Which writer's 1752 novel Micromégas is among the earliest works of fiction to feature Saturn?

Early fiction tended to depict Saturn as a solid world; only later stories correctly described it as a gaseous planet.

Which irregularly shaped moon, in resonance with Titan, was discovered by a British team in 1848?

It was the first significant find since Herschel's discovery of Mimas and Enceladus in 1789; Cassini had found Iapetus, Rhea, Tethys and Dione in the 1600s.