Saturn is the sixth planet from the sun with the largest ring system, which makes it one of the most easily identified planet for stargazers (figure 1). How Saturn got these fascinating rings around it is still a mystery to scientists today. There are many theories that will be discussed in this paper, but it is possible that no one could ever really know for sure. However, Saturn is not the only planet with a ring system, there are a few others but nothing as extravagant as what Saturn has. There are many aspects that make Saturn the unique planet it is such as its rings, moons, composition, and many other things. It has been looked at by astronomers and scientists since 700 BC and is still trying to be figured out today. In this paper, we
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Saturn’s mass is 5.6832 x 1026 kg and has an overall surface area of 4.2612 x 1010 km2 . There is an orbital period of 29.42yr and the length of day would be 10.7 earth hours. This planet is made up of 94% hydrogen and 6% helium, along with small amounts of methane and ammonia. The hydrogen is in sheet-like layers that become denser as it moves closer into the planet and eventually the hydrogen will become metallic. Saturn’s very hot core is made up of rock, ice, water, and other compounds that react to extreme heat and pressure. Saturn is the least dense planet in the solar system. It is said that if there was a body of water large enough to fit Saturn in it, it would actually float. The atmosphere around Saturn is separated into bands of clouds. The top layers are ammonia and ice, below the clouds it is mostly water ice, then under that there are layers of cold hydrogen and sulfur ice mixtures. On Saturn’s North Pole there is a mysterious hexagonal-shaped area with a ‘jet-stream” (see figure 3). Then on the south pole there seems to be a hurricane-like storm. This is similar to Jupiter in the fact that they both have oval-shaped storms. Saturn doesn’t only have its famous rings around it, it also has approximately 62 moons. There are 53 known moons and 9 still waiting to be confirmed. Some of the common moons are Titan, Enceladus, Lapetus, Mimas, Tethys, Dione, …show more content…
Some as small as dust grains or snow flakes, while some as big as a house. The rings are made up of ice and rock and they extend more than 120,700 km from Saturn itself. The rings are only about 20 meters thick, which is quite thin, and all lay on the same plane. According to NASA there is 7 rings that span up to 282,000 km, but the rings themselves are not solid which is why individual ring-like objects will never be able to be accurately counted. The rings may be viewed to be one solid piece, but there are actually several divisions. It would be impossible to tell how many “rings” Saturn actually has. We do know that there is three main systems: A, B, and C. Then there are other rings including the D ring, G ring, E ring, and the F ring which is outside the A ring. In the B ring there is dark ‘spokes’ that radiate. These have tiny charged particles that are stuck or ‘frozen’ in Saturn’s magnetic field. The Voyager observed one ‘spoke’ that grew over 6,000 km in a very rapid time frame (within a few minutes). The total of rings keeps rising as we use technology to look closer into the systems of rings there is, so it is truly hard to say how many rings there is orbiting Saturn.. However, Saturn is not the only planet to have rings. Other gas-giants such as Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune have very faint rings around them as
Saturn’s mass is 5.6832 x 1026 kg and has an overall surface area of 4.2612 x 1010 km2 . There is an orbital period of 29.42yr and the length of day would be 10.7 earth hours. This planet is made up of 94% hydrogen and 6% helium, along with small amounts of methane and ammonia. The hydrogen is in sheet-like layers that become denser as it moves closer into the planet and eventually the hydrogen will become metallic. Saturn’s very hot core is made up of rock, ice, water, and other compounds that react to extreme heat and pressure. Saturn is the least dense planet in the solar system. It is said that if there was a body of water large enough to fit Saturn in it, it would actually float. The atmosphere around Saturn is separated into bands of clouds. The top layers are ammonia and ice, below the clouds it is mostly water ice, then under that there are layers of cold hydrogen and sulfur ice mixtures. On Saturn’s North Pole there is a mysterious hexagonal-shaped area with a ‘jet-stream” (see figure 3). Then on the south pole there seems to be a hurricane-like storm. This is similar to Jupiter in the fact that they both have oval-shaped storms. Saturn doesn’t only have its famous rings around it, it also has approximately 62 moons. There are 53 known moons and 9 still waiting to be confirmed. Some of the common moons are Titan, Enceladus, Lapetus, Mimas, Tethys, Dione, …show more content…
Some as small as dust grains or snow flakes, while some as big as a house. The rings are made up of ice and rock and they extend more than 120,700 km from Saturn itself. The rings are only about 20 meters thick, which is quite thin, and all lay on the same plane. According to NASA there is 7 rings that span up to 282,000 km, but the rings themselves are not solid which is why individual ring-like objects will never be able to be accurately counted. The rings may be viewed to be one solid piece, but there are actually several divisions. It would be impossible to tell how many “rings” Saturn actually has. We do know that there is three main systems: A, B, and C. Then there are other rings including the D ring, G ring, E ring, and the F ring which is outside the A ring. In the B ring there is dark ‘spokes’ that radiate. These have tiny charged particles that are stuck or ‘frozen’ in Saturn’s magnetic field. The Voyager observed one ‘spoke’ that grew over 6,000 km in a very rapid time frame (within a few minutes). The total of rings keeps rising as we use technology to look closer into the systems of rings there is, so it is truly hard to say how many rings there is orbiting Saturn.. However, Saturn is not the only planet to have rings. Other gas-giants such as Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune have very faint rings around them as