*artist's drawing

distance from the Sun: about 1,429,000,000 km diameter: 74,732 miles = 120,536 km mass: about 568,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg temperature: -292 F at cloud tops number of moons: 18 found so far any rings? yes length of a year: 29.42 of our years length of a day: only 10 hrs, 13 min, 59 sec!!!

Saturn is one of the Gas Giants like Jupiter. Saturn is made of hydrogen and helium - just not as much helium as Jupiter. It is covered in an ocean of hydrogen. Below this, is liquid metallic hydrogen, then a big rock center (bigger than Jupiter's). Saturn doesn't have as much liquid metallic hydrogen as Jupiter does, so it doesn't have as strong of a magnetic  field. (Saturn is not as strong of a magnet as Jupiter.)

Definitely not! Just like Jupiter, there's no surface to stand on... You'd just have to swim around in an ocean of liquid hydrogen. But the gravity on Saturn is so strong that you'd sink anyway. There's no oxygen to breathe or water to drink. 

To escape Saturn's gravity and get out into space, a rocket has to travel at a speed of 79,600 mph or 35.6 km/sec. That's about 1225 times faster than your parents are allowed to drive on a U.S. highway!

Here are the 18 (the year they were discovered is after each one): Pan (1990), Atlas (1980), Prometheus (1980), Pandora (1980), Epimetheus (1980), Janus (1966), Mimas (1789), Enceladus (1789), Tethys (1684), Telesto (1980), Calypso (1980), Dione (1684), Helene (1980), Rhea (1672), Titan (1655), Hyperion (1848), Iapetus (1671), and Phoebe (1898). Whew!

Here's a good question for you... By looking at the discovery dates for the moons, can you figure out which ones are the smallest? (The answer is at the bottom of the page.)

The very coolest (not temperature!) of Saturn's moons is Mimas. It looks just like the Death Star from Star Wars!! (picture)

The coolest thing about Saturn is its set of rings! They're not solid rings like the ones you wear on your fingers. They're kind of like Saturn's own little asteroid belt. The rings are made up of millions and millions of chunks of rock and ice. These chunks range in size from only 1 cm to 5 m (5 m is only about 16 feet - not very big). The rings, themselves, are not very thick - only about 20 meters.

Sun | Mercury | Venus | Earth | Our Moon | Mars | Jupiter | Saturn | Uranus | Neptune | Pluto

Sources:
In Quest of the Universe, 2nd ed. by Karl F. Kuhn
Voyages Through the Universe, 2nd ed. by Fraknoi, Morrison and Wolff
Universe by Kaufmann
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Astronomy by Christopher De Pree and Alan Axelrod
The Astronomy Cafe by Sten Odenwald

The smallest moons are the ones that weren't seen until 1980!!