Saturn

Saturn is the last planet that is visible with the naked eye from Earth. Saturn is located 1.4 billion kilometers from Earth and has a diameter of 120,000 kilometers, making it the second largest planet in our Solar system. Saturn takes 29.46 Earth years to complete a single revolution around the Sun, however it's day is only 10.25 hours, less than half of Earth's.

Saturn, like Jupiter, has no solid surface, but rather a small rocky core the size of Earth, which is covered by a layer of frozen water and ammonia kept frozen through immense pressure, despite the temperature being 11,000 degrees C. Above this shell lies a sea of liquid metallic hydrogen 13,500 kilometers in depth, which in turn is shrouded by a 30,000 kilometer thick layer of liquid hydrogen, with a temperature of -150 degrees C.

Saturn's atmosphere consists of Ammonia clouds that swirl through the explosive combination of phosphine, ethane, methane, acetylane, methacetylane and propane.

The most noticable feature in Saturn's atmosphere is Anne's spot. It is a pale red feature in the southern hemisphere which is thought to be composed of phosphine, whilst not as large as the GRS, it is still a noticable feature.

Saturn's most prominent feature is it's ring system. The diameter of these rings is the same distance between the Earth and the Moon. In 1610 Galileo Galilei first observed the rings, but could not find out what they were. He at first thought they were two large moons, but these 'moons' did not rotate or change position. In 1655 Christiaan Huygens discovered Saturn's rings for what they were.When Voyager visited Saturn, we realised that there was not one, two, three or even four ring systems (as was previously thought). There were literally thousands of rings. The rings are divided into seven main rings. Closest to Saturn is the extremely faint D ring. The D ring merges into the more visible C ring. The C ring is approximately 17,400 kilometers wide. 31,400 kilometers above Saturn's cloud tops, the C ring merges into the B ring. The B ring is the brightest of the main rings and is also the widest, except for the E ring. The Cassini division seperates the B ring from the 14,400 km wide A ring. The F ring is located 3700 km beyond the outer edge of the A ring, and the G ring is located 33,120 km from the A ring. The E ring is very faint and is 89,300 km wide and is 145,000 km from Saturn's cloud tops.