Saturn is the second largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter being the larger planet. Its colour is somewhat yellow. It is the farthest planet from Earth that can be seen with the naked eye, so its existence has been known since prehistoric times. This results in the fact that we do not know who first discovered the planet. We can say that is is probably the last of the five visible planet to be discovered since it is the faintest of this group. The first person to observe the planet using a telescope was Galileo in 1610. While he was the first person to see the rings, he was unable to explain what he saw.
Being much farther from the Sun than the Earth (about 9.5 times), this gas giant takes a much longer time to orbit the Sun than the Earth, 29.46 Earth years (10759.5 Earth days1). However, it rotates on its axis, (giving the length of a day), much faster than Earth, giving it a day of 10 hours, 39 minutes, 24 seconds (10.233 hours1).
The planet has an equatorial diameter of 120 x 103km and a mass of 5.7x1029kg. Saturn is less dense than that of water, with a density of about 0.8g/cm3. Thus, if a body of water big enough existed, Saturn would float on it.
The interior the planet is composed of 5 main sections. From innermost to outermost, these sections are a rocky core, ices, metallic hydrogen, metallic and molecular hydrogen, and molecular hydrogen layers. On to of this is the atmosphere. Over 90% of Saturn's atmosphere is composed of hydrogen, with less amounts of helium and methane.
Winds on Saturn can reach to over 1500km/h!
Like Earth, the temperature of the planet changes with distance from the centre. The innermost regions are the hottest, with the temperature decreasing as the distance from the centre increases. At a certain point, the temperature stops decreasing and begins to increase. The temperature at the top of the molecular hydrogen "ocean" is around 135K.
The interior the planet is composed of 5 main sections. From innermost to outermost, these sections are a rocky core, ices, metallic hydrogen, metallic and molecular hydrogen, and molecular hydrogen layers. On to of this is the atmosphere. Over 90% of Saturn's atmosphere is composed of hydrogen, with less amounts of helium and methane.