Saturn belongs to a group of giant planets. It's the sixth planet from the sun.
In ancient mythology, Saturn was the divine father of Jupiter. Saturn was the god of time and destiny. As is known, Jupiter in his mythological guise went further than his father (in Roman mythology Jupiter is the main deity). In the solar system, Saturn is also given a second role among the planets.
Saturn is second in weight and size. There, the mass of Saturn is 5.68 ∙ 1026 kg or 95 masses of the Earth. And the diameter of the equator of this planet is almost 9.5 times larger than the Earth's diameter, that is, about 120 thousand km.
The polar diameter of Saturn is much smaller, as the planet is strongly flattened. This is explained by low density and fast rotation around the axis. The density of Saturn is less than the density of water (about 700 kg/m3). One romantic illustration of this is known: if it were possible to create a giant water ocean somewhere, Saturn could swim in it. The rotation period at the equator is 10 h 14 min and at the poles 10 h 40 min.
These are the factors that cause Saturn to shrink at a ratio of 1:10. The distance from Saturn to the Sun is approximately 1426 million km, and the period of circulation is 24.96 Earth years. The synodic period of rotation of Saturn is 378 days, so it can be observed annually for several months.
Thanks to its ring, Saturn is the most amazing planet in the solar system. Saturn's ring is located in the equatorial plane of the planet, which is inclined to the plane of orbit at 27O. Therefore, depending on the position of Saturn in its path, the ring turns to us one side, then the other side. Every 15 years it is settled down to us by an edge, and then it cannot be considered even in the strongest telescopes.
This means that the ring is very thin - only a few hundred meters. The last time this happened was in the summer of 1995. After that, the ring unfolds more and more towards us, and Saturn, accordingly, becomes brighter in each of the next confrontations. In 2001, on the day of the confrontation of December 3, Saturn will flare up to - 0.45 stellar value (in this year the rings will turn to the Earth).
The famous astronomer Galileo in 1610 discovered that Saturn is surrounded by something. But his telescope was too weak, so Galileo could not understand what he saw near Saturn. Only half a century later the Dutch scientist Huygens managed to find out that this flat ring, which surrounds the planet and does not touch it anywhere.
The study of Saturn with the help of more perfect telescopes has shown that the ring is divided into 3 parts, making as though 3 independent rings, enclosed one in another. The two outer bright rings A and B are divided by a dark failure known as the Cassini slit or "division", named after Giovanni Cassini who discovered it. Closer to the planet is a weak translucent ring, opened in 1858 by W. Bond in the U.S. and independently of him by W. R. Davis in England. It was called a crepe or inner ring. The brightest of the 3 rings is the middle ring, the B ring.
Saturn rings consist of small debris, each of which is drawn around the planet at the same speed as a satellite of the planet, located at the same distance. Each such fragment is as if an independent satellite, turning to itself around Saturn. These fragments are stones of different sizes, from a few centimeters to a meter across, but perhaps there is dust in the rings.
Such a structure of the rings was confirmed by the outstanding Russian astrophysicist A.A.Belopolsky (1854-1934). The system of Saturn rings either emerged from the destruction of the once existing satellite of the planet (for example, when it collided with another satellite or an asteroid), or represents the remainder of the substance from which in the distant past were formed Saturn's satellites, and which because of the tidal influence of the planet could not "gather" in separate satellites.
In addition to the rings around Saturn, there are 17 satellites moving around. One of them, Titan, is almost the same size as Mercury and a bit less in weight than Mercury. Other satellites have different sizes. But all of them are much smaller than Titan. This satellite has a shine of about 8.5 stars.