Saturn

Saturn
The second biggest planet in the Solar System

Saturn

  • 764 times as big in volume as earth and measure 75,000miles in diameter.
  • takes 29½ years to travel around the Sun.
  • complete orbit is a journey of nearly 3 billion miles.
  • winds ten times stronger than a hurricane on Earth swirl around Saturn’s equator, reaching up to 1,125 mile per hour (mph).
  • Saturn is not solid – made of gases and liquids; almost entirely hydrogen and helium.
  • only in the planets’s very small core is there any solid rock.
  • As Saturn is so big – the pressure deep inside is enough to turn hydrogen gas into a liquid; further down – extreme pressure makes the liquid hydrogen act like a metal.
  • one of the fastes-spinning planets – rotates in just 10.66 hours; this means that it spins at nearly 22,000 mph.

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Spacecraft Probe 

  • the surface of Saturn appears smooth because the clouds are hidden under a layer of a haze.
  • the Cassini probe has spotted lightening storms and a huge swirling storm near the pole.
  • the Cassini probe went into orbit around Saturn in 2004 for a four-year study of its clouds, rings and moons. It carried the Huygens probe, which dropped through the atmosphere of the largest moon, Titan, onto a surface so cold that the pebbles were made of solid ice.

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