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Saturn is named after the Roman god of wealth and agriculture, who was the father of the god Jupiter.Its astronomical symbol has been traced back to the Greek Oxyrhynchus Papyri, where it can be seen to be a Greek kappa-rho ligature with a horizontal stroke, as an abbreviation for Κρονος (), the Greek name for the planet (). [35]
Saturn (Latin: Sāturnus [saːˈtʊrnʊs]) was a god in ancient Roman religion, and a character in Roman mythology. He was described as a god of time, generation, dissolution, abundance, wealth, agriculture, periodic renewal and liberation.
Saturn – sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius about nine times that of Earth . [ 1 ] [ 2 ] Although only one-eighth the average density of Earth, with its larger volume Saturn is just over 95 times more massive.
The full set of rings, imaged on 19 July 2013 as Saturn eclipses the Sun from the vantage of the Cassini orbiter, 1.2 million km (¾ million miles) distant (brightness is exaggerated). Earth appears as a dot at 4 o'clock, between the G and E rings. The rings of Saturn are the most extensive and complex ring system of any planet in the Solar System.
An annotated picture of Saturn's many moons captured by the Cassini spacecraft. Shown in the image are Dione, Enceladus, Epimetheus, Prometheus, Mimas, Rhea, Janus, Tethys and Titan. The moons of Saturn are numerous and diverse, ranging from tiny moonlets only tens of meters across to the enormous Titan, which is larger than the planet Mercury.
Saturn's hexagon is a persistent approximately hexagonal cloud pattern around the north pole of the planet Saturn, located at about 78°N. [1] [2] [3] ...
Saturn's orbit plane is inclined 2.485 degrees relative to Earth's, and Jupiter's is inclined 1.303 degrees. The ascending nodes of both planets are similar (100.6 degrees for Jupiter and 113.7 degrees for Saturn), meaning if Saturn is above or below Earth's orbital plane Jupiter usually is too. Because these nodes align so well it would be ...
Missions to Saturn face competition from missions to other Solar System bodies. The Titan Saturn System Mission (TSSM) was a joint NASA/ESA proposal for an exploration of Saturn and its moons [10] Titan and Enceladus, where many complex phenomena have been revealed by the recent Cassini–Huygens mission.