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| Saturn and its Rings |
Saturn is the sixth planet in orderof revolution in the family of the Sun. It has a diametr of 1,20,536 kilometrs and is located in orbit about 1427 million kilometrs away from the Sun. saturn is about 95 times larger and has a surface gravity of 1.16 as compared to Earth.
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Moving at a speed of 9.6 kilo meters per second it takes about 30 years to complete one revolution around the sun and takes 10 hours and 39 minuts to complete one rotation on its axis. It has 23 moons which revolve around it. Because of its distance from the Sun, Saturn is a cold planet and the temperatures on surface very from –180° to –292° Centigrades. Seturnis one of the four planets which has rings around it as shown in the illustration. These rings made of million of fragments of rocks coated with ice surround this distant planet. It is not confirmed how these rings were formed but it is assumed that these rings are fragments of moons which brock apoart and were suspended around the planet millions of years ago. Saturn’s rings are about 22 times bigger than Earth’s diameter they are however only a few kilometers thick. Some of the rings have a larger number of frozen rock clusters as a result of which more light gets reflected which in turn explains why the rings are of different colours.
One of the moons circling this planet is the largest satellite known to man it is the moon called “Titan”. It has a diameter of 5120 km and is bigger than both Pluto and Mercury. Saturn is the second fastest rotating planet next to Jupiter. It is only is the last few decades that we have come to know a lot about Saturn. This was made possible through visits to Saturn by unmanned spacecraft sent from Earth. Saturn was first visited by the unmanned Pioneer XI space probe in 1979 and subsequently in 1986 by the Voyager I and Voyager II space probes. Both the space probes sent back invaluable pictures of the planets.
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