What Do You Know About Saturn?
What is the name of Saturn's largest moon?
- Saturn has 82 moons in total, with 8 major ones. Titan was the first moon discovered and is the largest one, being bigger than Mercury with its own atmosphere, lakes, and towering mountains— the largest peak stretching just under 11,000 feet.
What was the planet's namesake, the Roman god Saturn, known for?
- Saturn was essentially the Roman version of the ancient Greek deity named Cronus, a god of agriculture, often depicted with a scythe.
What is Saturn's size compared to the other planets in the Solar System?
- Though Jupiter is the largest planet, Saturn is still huge— it's a whopping nine times bigger than Earth!
Approximately how far can Saturn's ring system extend from the planet's surface?
- Though the rings can stretch out fairly far, they are only about 30 feet tall and comprised of broken asteroids, stray comets, or chunks from exploded moons.
What is special about Saturn's shape?
- Saturn's equatorial plane is wider than its polar diameter, making it look slightly flattened or oblate when seen through a telescope.
What are three gases that primarily make up the planet's surface and atmosphere?
- These components are what make Saturn appear brown, yellow, white, and gold, along with ammonia hydrosulfide and water.
What is the average temperature of Saturn's upper atmospheric layers?
- Though the surface of the planet is significantly hotter, the outer layers of Saturn's atmosphere are incredibly cold for a gas giant.
Like other planets, Saturn is known to have visible storms crossing its surface from time to time. What are they known as?
- Like Jupiter, Saturn also has storms that are strong enough to disturb the planet's gaseous layers, making these weather phenomena visible from Earth.
Saturn is part of a group of planets visible from Earth without a telescope, along with which other 4 planets?
- Visible with the naked eye, people can see these five planets when night falls, depending on the season.
Who was the first astronomer to spot Saturn?
- Though Galileo was the first person to see Saturn through an early telescope in July of 1610, he first thought its rings were several individual planets, instead of one mass.
