Saturn is the sixth planet from the sun and is the second largest planet in the solar system. Saturn is known as the "Lord of the Rings' because of its ring systems.

The planet Saturn is 1 429 400 000 km from the Sun. Its day is 11 hours long and one orbit around the sun takes 29.5 Earth years. It has an equatorial diameter if 120 536 km , its volume is 760 times the earth's. Saturn has a low density of 0.7 and if there was a body of water large enough it would float.

Saturn has an average temperature of about -180 degrees Celsius. It is thought to have an icy core surrounded by liquid metallic hydrogen and a deep layer of liquid hydrogen. Its atmosphere consists mainly of helium and hydrogen gases. Saturn would therefore not be solid to stand on. Saturn's seas are known to be made of methane, a colourless, odorless, flammable gas. Saturn's rains are known to be made of petrol.

In Roman mythology Saturn was named after the god of agriculture. His wife Ops was the goddess of the harvest. Saturn is the root word of the English word Saturday.

The seven ringed systems of the planet is made up of a series of smaller narrower ringlets. If these rings were broken up there would actually be thousands of ringlets. The rings are known to be made of ice and rock pieces.

 Saturn has twenty-three moons of which Titan is the largest. The other main moons are called: Mimas, Done, Rhea, Enchiladas, Tethy, Hyperion, Iapetus, Phebe, Janus, Epinthuis, Hulene, Telesto, Calypso, Atlas, Promtheous, Pandoras, and Pan. The Voyager spacecraft discovered the final nine.

                     Titan facing away from the Sun. 
 
 

Saturn has had 3 probes visit it already. The first was Pioneer 11 in 1974,  then the Voyager 1 spacecraft on November 12, 1980 was second and finally the Voyager 2 spacecraft. These spacecraft just did a flyby of the planet, they did not stay to study the planet.
 

On October 5 1997 the space probe Cassini left Earth for Saturn. Cassini is a probe that will go into orbit around the planet and study it in depth. It is due to reach Saturn in the year 2004. It will drop a small craft, called Huyghens onto Titan the biggest of Saturn's moons.

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The Cassini probe up in space.
                   An artists impression           The launch  of the Cassini probe
 
 

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