Early risers are in for a celestial treat this weekend when four planets in our solar system align in the sky, culminating in a "romantic" display between Venus and Jupiter.
Astronomy
Apr 29, 2022
0
242
From a viewpoint about 90 kilometers (56 miles) above Lacus Veris, "Lake of Spring," the camera aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft imaged Saturn on October 13, 2021. In this view, the Lunar Reconnaissance ...
Planetary Sciences
Nov 23, 2021
0
97
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has completed its annual grand tour of the outer Solar System. This is the realm of the giant planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—extending as far as 30 times the distance ...
Planetary Sciences
Nov 18, 2021
1
475
In the same way that earthquakes cause our planet to rumble, oscillations in the interior of Saturn make the gas giant jiggle around ever so slightly. Those motions, in turn, cause ripples in Saturn's rings.
Astronomy
Aug 16, 2021
15
3569
Nearly 40 years ago, scientists first predicted the existence of helium rain inside planets composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, such as Jupiter and Saturn. However, achieving the experimental conditions necessary to ...
Planetary Sciences
May 27, 2021
0
327
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is giving astronomers a view of changes in Saturn's vast and turbulent atmosphere as the planet's northern hemisphere summer transitions to fall as shown in this series of images taken in 2018, ...
Planetary Sciences
Mar 18, 2021
0
512
The solar system's two biggest planets, Jupiter and Saturn, came within planetary kissing range in Monday's evening sky, an intimacy that will not occur again until 2080.
Space Exploration
Dec 21, 2020
1
10038
Jupiter and Saturn will merge in the night sky Monday, appearing closer to one another than they have since Galileo's time in the 17th century.
Space Exploration
Dec 18, 2020
0
1510
A trio of researchers, two with Harvard University, the other the University of Alberta, has found evidence that weather on Saturn and Jupiter may be driven by dramatically different forces than weather on Earth. In their ...
Catherine Neish is counting the days until her space launch. While the Western planetary geologist isn't space-suiting up for her own interstellar voyage, she is playing a key role in an international mission—dispatching ...
Astronomy
Oct 01, 2020
2
562
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Saturn, along with Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, is classified as a gas giant. Together, these four planets are sometimes referred to as the Jovian, meaning "Jupiter-like", planets.
Saturn is named after the Roman god Saturn (that became the namesake of Saturday), equated to the Greek Kronos (the Titan father of Zeus) the Babylonian Ninurta and to the Hindu Shani. Saturn's symbol represents the god's sickle (Unicode: ♄).
The planet Saturn is composed of hydrogen, with small proportions of helium and trace elements. The interior consists of a small core of rock and ice, surrounded by a thick layer of metallic hydrogen and a gaseous outer layer. The outer atmosphere is generally bland in appearance, although long-lived features can appear. Wind speeds on Saturn can reach 1,800 km/h, significantly faster than those on Jupiter. Saturn has a planetary magnetic field intermediate in strength between that of Earth and the more powerful field around Jupiter.
Saturn has a prominent system of rings, consisting mostly of ice particles with a smaller amount of rocky debris and dust. Sixty-one known moons orbit the planet, not counting hundreds of "moonlets" within the rings. Titan, Saturn's largest and the Solar System's second largest moon (after Jupiter's Ganymede), is larger than the planet Mercury and is the only moon in the Solar System to possess a significant atmosphere.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
