:: Saturn moons

Main moons of Saturn:

Prometheus

Prometheus, the third known moon of Saturn, is small and potato-shaped and it orbits Saturn in the ring F. It has a few craters of about 20 km that are in diameter visible.

In the Greek mythology, Prometheus was a titan, it is known for stealing fire from Zeus and giving it to humans.

• Distance from Saturn: 139 353 km
• Diameter: 91 km
• Time to orbit Saturn: 0.61 days

Enceladus

Tenth moon from Saturn, Encelade orbits the Planet in the Ring E. This moon is the brightest object in the known solar system. It was discovered by William Hershel in 1789. This moon displays at least 5 different types of terrain.

• Diameter: 500 km
• Distance from Saturn: 238 020 km
• Time to orbit Saturn: 1.37 Earth days

Dione

Nice and round, Dione was discovered by Cassiny the same day as Tethys. It is an icy body and is one of the densest moons of Saturn. Its surface is heavily cratered. Some of its craters are more than 100 km.

• Distance from Saturn: 377 400 km
• Diameter: 1120 km
• Time to orbit Saturn: 2.74 Earth days

Titan

Titan, the size of Mercury, is the largest of Saturn's moons. Before the Voyager encounters, scientists thought a lot of things that are now known to be wrong.

Titan's surface temperature appears to be about -178°C.

• Distance of Saturn: 1.22 million km
• Time to orbit Saturn: 15.9 earth days
• Diameter: 5 150 km

There are much more important moons of Saturn but please don't expect me to write about them because there are... 61!! Only 34 are named though.

The diameters of Saturn's moons range from 2 to 5150 kms.

:: Saturn rings

What makes Saturn so beautiful is her rings. The rings of Saturn are much more elaborate than those of any other planets.

Saturn's rings are divided into 7: D, C, B, A, F, G and E. It is hard to see the F and G rings but A, B and C are visible with a telescope.

(the F and G rings are thin)

Whene Galileo observed the rings for the first time he thought they where moons.

The rings of Saturn are about the 4,000,000 kms wide!

The distance of Saturn to the rings is like the distance of earth to the moon.

They are composed of: icy snowballs or ice covered rocks.

(This picture shows the B ring)

:: Saturn

The sixth Planet from the sun, the second largest, Saturn's amazing view impresses all astronomers. In fact it is one of the most beautiful sights in the Solar System. Saturn, also one of the gas planets, can only sometimes in the year be seen like a star, if you wish to see the planet's rings, use a telescope. As you will see in the following text, this giant has been visited by spacecrafts...

This enourmous planet is composed of gaz, except (of course) for the core. To be precise, I will tell you the gazes: 96% hydrogen and 4% helium.

The mass of Saturn is approximately 95 times that of the earth but Earth would fit easily 746 times in Saturn.

Saturn is of such low density that it would float in a (gigantic) bathtub.

Saturn has a great white spot (that is a storm). It was discovered in 1990 and named after Jupiter's great red spot; it is about 1000 meters wide.

NASA’s Pioneer 11 was the first satellite to go to Saturn. It was in 1979. A bit later, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 reached Saturn too.

For the Romans, Saturn was the God of Time.

• Diameter of Saturn: 121.000 km.
• Distance to the sun: 1.427 millions km.
  
• Duration of rotation: 10 hours. Saturn rotates very quickly around it's axis.
• Duration of revolution : 30 hours.

Saturn Moons

Saturn rings

Pictures of Saturn