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Saturn

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Saturn

Most people only know Saturn for its rings, but have you ever wondered about the physics? Saturn is an interesting planet with the most spectacular rings! In Roman Mythology, Saturn is a god of agriculture. Also, Saturn is the root of the English word Saturday. Being the 6th planet from the sun, it is known as a gas giant. This planet has a thick atmosphere, seven rings, and has no solid surfaces.

Saturn’s atmosphere is 75% hydrogen, and 25% helium. This causes the atmosphere to become thick. The planet of Saturn is made of many different composites. Some of them are ice, rocks, dust, and floating chunks of water. In visible light, Saturn can be seen to look more boring than Jupiter. The part of Saturn that can be seen is the visible cloud deck. The lowest cloud deck is made of water clouds and is 130 km below the tropopause. This cloud deck is made of ammonia. Below the cloud deck, pressures and temperatures increase with depth. Some of the fastest winds in the Solar System are in Saturn. NASA’s voyager spacecraft clocked winds going as fast as 1800 km/hr at the planets equator. These winds can also cause large white storms within the bands that circle the planet. The bands are otherwise known as the rings. Saturn has seven rings. These rings are named by letter. The order from Saturn is D, C, B, A, F, G, E. All of the rings are not solid, as they appear. They are made of floating chunks of water, ice, rocks, and dust. Ring A and Ring B are the two brightest rings. However, Ring B is the widest and the thickest. The C ring is called the Crepe ring because it is extremely transparent. Similar to Ring C, Ring D is barely visible. Pandora and Prometheus are the two moons which hold together the narrow F Ring. Because Ring E is closest to the rest of the Solar System, it is made of many particles which are shed from nearby moons. In between the sever rings are gaps. Some of the gaps are called The Cassini Division, which is between the A Ring and the B Ring, and The Encke Division, which is located on the outer edge of the A Ring. These rings are not perfect circles but have bends. These bends are caused by the pull of gravity from the nearby moons. The surface of Saturn is not solid at all. This is because the planet is made of 97% Hydrogen and 3% Helium. Saturn is the least dense planet in the atmosphere. In the planet there are layers. There is a rocky core, a liquid metallic hydrogen layer, and molecular hydrogen layer. The rocky core has a radius possibly three times as large as earth. Saturn has a very strong magnetic field as well. It is from the electrical current in conductive layers near the quickly-rotating planet’s core. Because of the magnetic field, there are abundant auroras on Saturn. Not having solid surfaces, nobody has been able to land on Saturn. Saturn has a thick atmosphere, seven rings, and has no solid surfaces. On Saturn, one year is 29.5 earth years. Saturn also has an extremely cold temperature of -274 degrees Fahrenheit. Saturn has many still to be discovered qualities.

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