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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 has relatively weak radiation belts, because energetic particles are absorbed by the moons and particulate material orbiting the planet. [47] The densest (main) radiation belt lies between the inner edge of the Enceladus gas torus at 3.5 R s and the outer edge of the A Ring at 2.3 R s.
E.g. the lifetimes due to sputtering of micron sized dust particles in Saturn's E ring is a few 100 years. During this time the dust particles loose >90% of their mass and spiral from their source at Enceladus (at 4 Saturn radii, ) to the orbit of Titan at 20 . [193]
The hexagon may be a bit more than 29,000 km (18,000 mi) wide, [9] may be 300 km (190 mi) high, and may be a jet stream made of atmospheric gases moving at 320 km/h (200 mph). [ 4 ] [ 5 ] [ 10 ] It rotates with a period of 10h 39m 24s , the same period as Saturn's radio emissions from its interior. [ 11 ]
The prevailing theory is that they coalesce during the collapse of a nebula into a thin disk of gas and dust. A protostar forms at the core, surrounded by a rotating protoplanetary disk. Through accretion (a process of sticky collision) dust particles in the disk steadily accumulate mass to form ever-larger bodies.
The unusual image was taken by a camera on the Cassini spacecraft on April 8, 2016, at a distance of about 1.4 million miles away from Saturn. NASA spots mysterious activity in Saturn's F Ring ...
About 25% of its mass, NASA estimates, is made up of water. Saturn’s moon Enceladus , with a 313-mile diameter, regularly emits icy geysers, produced when oceans beneath its crust are squeezed ...
Pan is the innermost named moon of Saturn. [4] It is approximately 35 kilometres across and 23 km wide and orbits within the Encke Gap in Saturn's A Ring. Pan is a ring shepherd and is responsible for keeping the Encke Gap free of ring particles. It is sometimes described as having the appearance of a walnut, or raviolo. [5]