Saturn

Saturn belted with rings is the last easily visible planet just with naked eye. In the night sky it looks like a bright yellow spot. A view through a small telescope reveals a bright disk with a hint of rings and also Saturn's largest moon, Titan, can be seen nearby. It's the only moon in the Solar System with a thick atmosphere.



Saturn's famous rings have a diameter of 300,000 kilometers, but in some places their thickness reaches only a few tens of meters. The rings are formed from a huge amount of especially small ice particles with admixture of dust. But also ice boulders as big as a car or even a multilevel house can be found there.



Like Jupiter, Saturn is also a gas giant. This means that a dense and turbulent hydrogen atmosphere in admixture with helium passes gradually with depth into liquid molecular hydrogen, under which there is a layer of liquid hydrogen and very hot liquid iron-stone core.



Saturn has a large family of more than sixty moons.