SATURN   Spectacular and complex

Fascinating Facts About Saturn

• If the sun were as tall as a typical front door, the Earth would be the size of a nickel and Saturn would be about as big as a volleyball.
• From Saturn’s surface, the Sun appears about one-tenth as large as it does from Earth and sunlight appears about 90 times dimmer.
• Saturn is twice as far away from the Sun as the Jupiter is, and the farthest planet that can be seen with the naked eye from Earth.
• Saturn is the least dense planet in the solar system because it is mostly made of gas; it is the only planet less dense than water!
• Saturn emits about 2.3 times the energy it receives from the Sun. This energy is thought to come from the continued cooling of the planet after its gravitational collapse during the formation of the solar system. Because of this, the weather on the planet is internally driven: it depends on the energy emitted by the planet itself. On the other hand, the weather on Earth is externally driven, by the sun!
• Saturn has some of fastest winds in the solar system; winds have been measured up to the speed of 1800 kilometers per hour.
• The planet’s rings are made up of bits of ice, dust and rock; these can range from the size of a grain of sand up to sizes larger large buildings. The rings also contain moonlets (likely chunks of the ancient body that broke up to produce Saturn’s rings) and ‘propeller’ structures (gaps in ring material thought to be caused by the moonlets). The evidence for moonlets and ‘propeller’ structures suggests there is a dynamic between Saturn’s moons and rings.