Saturn

Saturn has a diameter of 74,900 miles ( 120,500 km), making it nearly as large as Jupiter. Jupiter is about 11 times as wide as the Earth, while Saturn is more than nine time as wide. A saturn day is less than 11 hours and a year equals about 29.5 Earth years. The planet is 885,000,000 miles from the sun. A person weighing 100 pounds on Earth will weigh 116 pounds on Saturn. Saturn has at least 20 moons. Titan is the most observable moon with a sixteen day orbit around Saturn.

The rings around Saturn are made up of billions of pieces of ice and rock orbiting the planet. Some are very tiny while others are ten feet wide. At times due to Saturn's tilt the rings almost seem invisible.The rings of Saturn vary in density. There are thousands of different rings. The Cassini division of the rings is the most notable. Strong winds in the atmosphere sometmes blow as fast as 1,000 mph. Storms rage on Saturn. It is very cold in the cloud cover with temperatures of -300 degrees F ( -185 degrees C). Further inside the planet it is much hotter. Saturn like Jupiter is mostly hydrogen. It probably has a rocky core, surrounded by a layer of liquid metallic (molten) hydrogen, and a thin layer of liquid hydrogen. Saturn appears yellowish in color and is fainter than Jupiter.

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