A favorite among many night sky observers, Saturn is one of the most recognizable planets in our solar system. While rings now have been discovered around many of our other planets, only Saturn has rings that are so bright and prominently displayed.
At 900 million miles from Earth, Saturn is about twice as far from Earth as Jupiter. It’s also the second largest planet in the solar system behind Jupiter. Saturn is the only planet in the solar system that has an overall density much less than water. The old joke is, if you could place Saturn in a giant bathtub it would float, but it would leave a ring.
Saturn’s atmosphere is much calmer and less turbulent than that of Jupiter. The atmosphere is made up of mostly hydrogen and helium, with some ammonia in the upper atmosphere.
Saturn is by far the champion of the solar system with 146 known moons orbiting the planet, and this doesn’t count the millions of small ice chunks and moonlets that orbit within the rings of the planet. Only 86 of Saturn’s moons have been given official names.
Saturn has many prominent moons, including Titan, the second largest moon in the solar system behind Jupiter’s Ganymede. Titan is also larger than the planet Mercury and would be classified as a planet if it was orbiting the Sun instead of Saturn. Titan has a dense atmosphere of hydrocarbon gasses like methane and ethane, and lakes of liquid hydrocarbon on its surface.
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