Gimme Some Space : Saturn

A New Ring Discovered Around Saturn

Amaryllis Place — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:34:00 GMT

Image from NASA

A gigantic ring has recently been discovered around Saturn. Most of the material in the ring starts about 3.7 million miles from the planet and extends about another 7.4 million miles. This thing is HUGE. It is made up of ice and dust particles and is not visible with visible light telescopes. The cool ring particles were detected by an infrared telescope. Phoebe, one of Saturn's moons, orbits within the ring, going in the same direction as the ring. All of the other moons and rings of Saturn orbit in the opposite direction.

Interesting Facts about Saturn

Amaryllis Place — Thu, 28 May 2009 15:41:00 GMT

least dense planet, it would float in water
well-known for its rings made of ice, dust, and rocks
rings are 150,000 miles in diameter but less than 1 km in thickness
most flattened planet due to fast rotation
farthest planet easily visible to the naked eye
the warmest place on Saturn is at its polar vortex (large-scale cyclone). It reaches a balmy -122 °C instead of the average -185 °C.

one day on Saturn is equivalent to 10 hours 32 minutes on Earth

one year on Saturn is 29.4 Earth years

Interesting Facts about the Outer Planets

Amaryllis Place — Mon, 11 May 2009 19:57:00 GMT

The outer planets are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
Located outside of the asteroid belt.
These planets are much larger than the inner planets and are called gas giants as they are composed primarily of hydrogen and helium.
No solid surface. The hydrogen and helium are in gas form in the atmosphere and below that in a liquid state.
Each has many moons and rings.

I found a very nice flash piece on another website that shows the relative speed of these planets in orbit around the sun. Click here to view it.