The Science Mouse

Saturn's size in comparison to Earth. Image courtesy http://nasa.gov

Saturn is named for the Roman god Saturnus which is also where the word Saturday came from.  He was the Roman god of agriculture, justice and strength.  He was depicted as having a sickle in his left hand and a bundle of wheat in his right hand.  The sickle is where the symbol for Saturn comes from.

Saturn is the furthest planet from the sun that we can still see without a telescope.  In 1610, Galileo was the first person to look at Saturn through a telescope.  It looked to him like Saturn had ears.  Christian Huygens was the first person to see what these “ears” were.  Using a better telescope in 1656, he saw that Saturn had rings.  Saturn was the first planet found to have rings.  Now we know that these rings are made of rocks, chunks of ice and dust particles.

Saturn, along with Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, is known as a gas giant.  It is made up mostly of hydrogen and helium, and scientists believe that there are areas where the gases turn to liquid because of atmospheric pressure.  The planet is not very dense.  In fact, scientists think that if we had an ocean big enough, Saturn would even float!

Northern clouds of Titan, image courtesy http://nasa.gov

Saturn has at least 18 moons but only nine of them can be seen with a telescope from Earth.  The others were discovered by the Voyager space probes.  Saturn’s largest moon is Titan.  It is the second largest moon in the solar system, and is even bigger than the planet Mercury.  It is the only moon in our solar system that has clouds and a thick atmosphere.

The most recent space probe to visit Saturn was Cassini, part of a joint mission between NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and ESA (European Space Agency) which got to Saturn in 2004.  It released the Huygen space probe which went to Titan.  It took pictures, measurements and landed on Titan.  It survived a few hours on Titan’s surface and sent back pictures that looked like Earth.  You can learn more about this amazing moon by watching NASA’s video Saturn Moons Explorer, Titan.