Saturn’s Discoveries
Mini Fact: Saturn goes around the sun very slowly. A year on Saturn is more than 29 Earth years.
Saturn is the sixth planet from the sun and the second-largest planet in our solar system. It has rings made of chunks of ice and rock. While people have known about this planet since ancient times, scientists are still making discoveries about it today! The Mini Page learns about Saturn this week.
Moons
Earth has only one moon, but NASA reports that Saturn has 146 of them! Some of them are new discoveries. In May 2023, a research team led by Edward Ashton found 62 new moons. This means that Saturn has the most moons of any planet in our solar system.
The moons vary in size — some of them are huge, like the one called Titan. Titan is the largest of Saturn’s moons, with a diameter of 3,200 miles. Other moons are much smaller, like the size of an arena, according to NASA.
Saturn also has thousands of moonlets, or tiny moons, within its compacted rings.
Rings
At the end of June 2023, NASA released a vivid image of Saturn and its rings. The image was captured by the James Webb Space Telescope using a special type of camera called near-infrared that made the rings stand out. NASA said this was the first time Saturn was captured with this amount of clarity at this wavelength. The planet looks dark, according to NASA, because methane gas absorbs a lot of the light from the sun.
The telescope took this image in hopes of learning more about Saturn’s moons and potential moons.
“Any newly discovered moons could help scientists put together a more complete picture of the current system of Saturn, as well as its past,” NASA said.
Imaging like this also helps scientists get a better understanding of Saturn’s atmosphere. Saturn is made mostly of hydrogen and helium, which are gases. At its center, however, rocky material surrounds a center of metals, like nickel and iron.
Saturn doesn’t have a solid surface, but it does have water vapor in its atmosphere.