Interesting facts on Saturn.

Some interesting facts about my favourite planet.... its a mysterious one.


Saturn is the least dense planet in the Solar System

Saturn has a density of 0.687 grams/cubic centimeter. Just for comparison, water is 1 g/cm3 and the Earth is 5.52. Since Saturn is less dense than water, it would actually float like an apple if you could find a pool large enough.

How long is a day on Saturn is a mystery

Determining the rotation speed of Saturn was actually very difficult to do. The planet doesn’t have a solid surface, so it’s not like you can watch to see how long it takes for a specific crater to rotate back into view. To determine the rotational speed of Saturn, astronomers have to measure the rotation of the planet’s magnetic field. By one measurement, Saturn takes 10 hours and 14 minutes to turn on its orbit, but when Cassini approached Saturn, it clocked the rotation at 10 hours and 45 minutes. Astronomers now agree on an average day of 10 hours, 32 minutes and 35 seconds.

Saturn’s rings could be old, or they could be young.

It’s possible that Saturn’s rings have been around since the beginning of the Solar System – almost 4.6 billion years ago. They have been created when a 300 km ice moon was torn apart by Saturn’s gravity, and formed a ring around the planet. It’s also possible that they’re the left over material when Saturn formed in the solar nebula. But astronomers have also found that the ring material looks just too clean to have formed so long ago, and could be as young as 100 million years old. It’s all just a big mystery.

Saturn is a flattened ball

Saturn spins so quickly on its axis that the planet flattens itself out. While the distance from the center to the poles is 54,000 km, the distance from the center to the equator is 60,300 km. In other words, locations on the equator are approximately 6,300 km more distant from the center than the poles.