Saturn

5 Pages 1357 Words

The sixth planet in the solar system that displays its stunning array of rings makes Saturn one of the most interesting planets in the solar system. A very easy planet to pick out in the sky on account of it being one of the brightest lights in the sky, it also has a very faint greenish color that makes it stand out from the rest of the objects in the sky (“Astronomy for Kids”). Saturn is the second largest planet in the solar system, after Jupiter, with at least eighteen moons, more than any other planet in the solar system. There have been three voyages to this extraordinary planet; one that is still in process today. The Pioneer 11 traveled to Saturn in September of 1979, the Voyager missions took place in the 1980’s, and the Cassini probe began its voyage in October of 1997 (Kuhn 280-282).
Many aspects of Saturn make it one of the most extraordinary planets in this solar system. In 1610, Galileo Galilei was the first to view Saturn’s system of rings; he happened to be viewing their edge and failed to recognize them as rings. In fact, he mistakenly interpreted the rings to be two moons similar to those he had discovered near the planet Jupiter. In 1655, a Dutch astronomer named Christian Huygens was able to discern what Galileo had thought to be moons as rings from a much-improved telescope than used by Galileo. Italian astronomer Cassini, found a second moon of Saturn called Iapetus, in 1671, and discovered that Saturn had more than one ring, known as a concentric pair of rings in 1675. Johann Franz Encke discovered a third ring in 1837 using a telescope at the Berlin observatory. Until Pioneer 11 approached Saturn in September of 1979, the planet was thought to have but three rings (Yenne 125).
Saturn, the second Jovian planet, and the sixth planet in the solar system, located between Jupiter and Uranus. Its average distance from the Sun is over 850 million miles, compared to Earth’s, which is 93 million m...