1. Saturn: The Jewel of the Solar System

2. Saturn Named for the Roman god of Agriculture Second largest planet The planet can be seen from Earth with the unaided eye, but its rings cannot. Saturn was the farthest planet from Earth that the ancient astronomers knew about. Known for rings (7 rings, 3 groups)

3. Saturn by the Numbers 9.5 AU from the sun Revolves every ~29.5 Earth years 27 degree tilt Rotates 10 hours 39 minutes Density: 687 kg/m³ Force of gravity: 10.4 m/s 2 Eccentricity: 0.05 Number of moons: 53 (confirmed)

4. Rings They are made of billions of small chunks of ice and rock Discovered by Galileo in the 16oos Edge-to-edge, Saturn’s rings stretch some 270,000 kilometers (165,000 miles)—two-thirds the distance from Earth to the moon. Yet in most places they are only about ten meters (about 30 feet) thick. Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch astronomer, described a "thin, flat" ring around Saturn. Huygens thought the ring was a solid sheet of some material. (Discovered Titan) In 1675, Giovanni Domenico Cassini, an Italian-born French astronomer, announced the discovery of two separate rings made up of swarms of satellites. Later observations of Saturn resulted in the discovery of more rings. (1 st to observe 4 of Saturns moons)

5. Composition hot solid inner core of iron and rocky material outer core that probably consists of ammonia, methane, and water Clouds average -285 degrees F The planet can be seen from Earth with the unaided eye, but its rings cannot. Saturn was the farthest planet from Earth that the ancient astronomers knew about. A layer of highly compressed, liquid metallic hydrogen surrounds the outer core. Above this layer lies a region composed of hydrogen and helium in a viscous (syruplike) form. The hydrogen and helium become gaseous near the planet's surface and merge with its atmosphere

6. Saturn Saturns “banded” appearance seems to be caused by differences in the temperature and altitude of atmospheric gas masses. Saturn is slowly collapsing from its own gravity, which generates as much heat as it receives from the sun The result of this phenomenon:bizarre cyclones, high‐speed winds and bolts of lightning

7. Missions The Cassini Spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on October15,1997. Rather than flying directly to Saturn, it first looped twice around the Sun, taking advantage of two gravity ‐ assists from Venus and one from Earth to catapult it to the outer solar system, where it got another assist from Jupiter. Cassini reached Saturn in 2004.

8. Moons of Saturn Saturn’s many moons appear to be made of water ice Besides the small moons, Saturn has: Six medium-sized moons (Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, and Iapetus) Titan is the largest moon, larger than Mercury