The planet Saturn takes its name from a Roman god of agriculture. And of all the planets revolving around our sun, it's "cultivated" — if you will — the greatest ring system by far.
Beautiful rings filled with ice, dust and rock orbit its equator. The widest one, called the Phoebe Ring, has an outer edge that's 3.8 to 10.1 million miles (or 6 to 16.2 million kilometers) away from Saturn itself. For comparison, do you know what the average distance is between Earth and its moon? A paltry 238,855 miles, or 384,400 kilometers. Once again, astronomy puts the human ego in check.
Advertisement
Saturn's rings get all the attention, but science buffs shouldn't ignore its other attributes. The sixth planet in our solar system, it's also the second biggest after Jupiter. Those two are in a league of their own. If you mushed every planet from Mercury to Neptune together, Saturn and Jupiter alone would account for over 90 percent of their cumulative mass.
Despite its immense size, Saturn is the least dense planet in the sun's orbit — and the least spherical, too. We'll need to look at its physical makeup to understand why.
Advertisement