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Saturn takes about 10.7 hours (no one knows precisely) to rotate once on its axis—a Saturn “day”—and 29 Earth years to orbit the sun. Saturn is a gas giant and does not have a solid ...
Measuring ring-material detected by Cassini falling into Saturn’s equator allowed astronomers to give the rings another 100 million years to live. This story has been updated to fix a typo.
The sun passes south to north through the ring plane when Saturn's heliocentric longitude is 173.6 degrees (e.g. 11 August 2009), about the time Saturn crosses from Leo to Virgo. 15.7 years later Saturn's longitude reaches 353.6 degrees and the sun passes to the south side of the ring plane. On each orbit the Sun is north of the ring plane for ...
Fainter planetary rings can form as a result of meteoroid impacts with moons orbiting around the planet or, in the case of Saturn's E-ring, the ejecta of cryovolcanic material. [6] [7] Ring systems may form around centaurs when they are tidally disrupted in a close encounter (within 0.4 to 0.8 times the Roche limit) with a giant
On Monday, Aug. 2, Saturn will officially reach opposition, meaning that it will appear opposite of the sun from the perspective of the Earth. Saturn is at opposi See the rings of Saturn during ...
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]
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The moon would have been torn apart by Saturn's tidal forces, somewhere between 200 and 100 million years ago. Up to 99% of the moon's mass would have been swallowed by Saturn, with the remaining 1% forming the rings of Saturn. [2] The origin of Saturn's rings from the destruction of a satellite has been previously proposed by other authors. [3]