09 February 2012

What are the rings of Saturn made up of?


Saturn was regarded as the outermost planet until the late 1700s. It takes nearly 30 Earth-years to make one complete journey around the Sun. Its remarkable feature is its flat shiny rings. From one side to the other. The rings measure over 270,000 km and they are about 60,000 km wide. After Jupiter, Saturn is the largest planet, with a diameter nearly 10 times that of Earth. This giant planet has a much lower relative density than Jupiter, only 0.7. This is the lowest of all the planets and is less than the density of water (1.0), so if Saturn could be placed in a vast ocean of water, it would float.  It is a very windy planet. The winds are strongest around the equator, where they reach the phenomenal speed of 1,800 km/h.

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