The Romans named planets after their most significant gods, and named Saturn after the god of wealth and agriculture. Additionally, Saturn was the father of Jupiter, and later became known as the god of time.
In ancient Greece, the equivalent god of agriculture was Cronus, who was the father of both Jupiter and Zeus. The same tradition was followed when the other planets of the Solar System were discovered, despite the fact that the same mythical gods were no longer revered in the same way.
Saturn is roughly nine times wider than Earth, with a radius of 36, They looked as though they had personalities and a will of their own. However, Saturn did not take any other super interesting nicknames other than from the god it was named for. Saturn is simply known by its name and by the nickname the Ringed Planet. Next time you look up and spot Saturn hanging in the sky, be sure to think back to the Roman culture that named it many years ago now you know this interesting Saturn fact.
So how did Saturn, one of the six bright objects, get its name? Does Saturn have a nickname? Related Posts. Saturn has seven major satellites with one of them being even bigger than the planet Mercury. Titan is the first discovered moon of Saturn. It was discovered in by astronomer Christiaan Huygens.
It is the largest moon of Saturn and the second-biggest moon in the Solar System. It has a radius of about 1.
It is almost as wide as the state of Canada. The moon is primarily composed of ice and rocky material, with a rocky core in the center surrounded by various layers of ice, and a subsurface layer of ammonia-rich liquid water. The atmosphere is largely made up of nitrogen, methane, and ethane clouds with nitrogen-rich organic smog.
Climate features include wind and rain that create features similar to those of Earth, such as dunes, rivers, lakes, seas, and deltas. It orbits Saturn once every 15 days and 22 hours and it is tidally locked with its parent planet, only one side of its face is director towards Saturn, permanently.
The small, irregularly shaped satellite Hyperion is locked in a orbital resonance with Titan. Analysis of Titan's atmospheric nitrogen suggested that it has possibly been sourced from a material similar to that found in the Oort cloud and not from sources present during co-accretion of materials around Saturn.
At this temperature, water ice has an extremely low vapor pressure, so the little water vapor present appears limited to the stratosphere. Atmospheric methane creates a greenhouse effect on Titan's surface, without which Titan would be far colder.
Titan is the most distant body from Earth to have a space probe land on its surface. The spacecraft Huygens landed on Titan in Analysis since then points out that Titan may be a prebiotic environment rich in complex organic compounds. It contains a global ocean beneath its icy shell, and within this ocean, conditions are potentially suitable for microbial life.
These discoveries make Titan a very closely studied object, with future missions already being planned. It is the first non-round moon to be discovered in the Solar System. Its irregular shape, chaotic rotation, and sponge-like appearance make it a very unique object. It is named after the Titan god of watchfulness and observation, the elder brother of Cronus. Hyperion has a diameter of about It is believed that this moon was once part of a larger body that suffered a large impact in the past.
Like most of the other moons, it has a low density suggesting that it is composed largely out of water ice and rock. The surface is covered with deep, sharp-edged craters that give it an appearance similar to that of a sponge.
Dark material fills the bottom of each crater. Its rotation is chaotic, wobbling so much that its orientation in space is quite unpredictable. It was discovered in by William Herschel and named after the giant Enceladus of Greek mythology. This moon is mostly covered by fresh, clean ice, making it one of the most reflective bodies of the Solar System. Over geysers have been identified, together with water-rich plumes, cryovolcanoes that shoot geyser-like jets of water vapor, molecular hydrogen, other volatiles, and solid material into space.
It is the only moon of Saturn that is currently endogenously active while at the same time, it is the smallest known body in the Solar System that is geologically active today. It may also have liquid water underneath its south-polar surface. Recently, data revealed the presence of organic compounds in the plumes of liquid water that shoot into space. These compounds carry nitrogen and oxygen — elements that play a key role in producing amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Tethys is the third-largest inner moon of Saturn.
It has the lowest density out of all the moons suggesting it is primarily made out of water, and a small fraction of rock. It was discovered in by G. Cassini and named after a titan of Greek mythology.
It has a diameter of about 1. A small amount of unidentified dark material is present on the moon. It is believed that the moon formed alongside the other regular moons from the Saturnian sub-nebula — a disk of gas and dust that surrounded Saturn soon after its formation.
It orbits Saturn at a distance of almost Dione is the second-largest inner moon of Saturn. It has a higher density than the geologically dead Rhea, the largest inner moon, but lower than that of active Enceladus. It orbits Saturn with a semimajor axis and it is currently in a mean-motion orbital resonance with moon Enceladus, completing one orbit of Saturn for every two orbits completed by Enceladus. This resonance maintains Enceladus's orbital eccentricity 0. Dione has a diameter of about 1.
About two-thirds of Dione's mass is water ice, and the remaining is a dense core, probably silicate rock.
Further information suggests that it also has an internal liquid saltwater ocean similar to Enceladus.
The timing of the Roman religious festival called Saturnalia in late December led to the image of Saturn as Father Time that we are familiar with today. Some other facts about Saturn the planet : Saturn is what is known as a gas giant—made up of mostly hydrogen and helium—making it lighter than water, but very windy—winds are thought to be able to reach 1, kilometers an hour, lightning on Saturn is about 1, times more powerful than lightning on Earth, and a hurricane on Saturn is 20 times as big!
Saturn has the second largest moon in the Solar System—called Titan—and Titan is the only moon known to have a thick atmosphere. Speaking of moons , Saturn has about 82 of them that have been discovered so far.
Saturn is also thought to have a multitude of moonlets satellites with diameters ranging from about meters. Four different probes have been to Saturn in the last 40 years—Pioneer 11 flew by it in September , then Voyager 1 sent back the first high resolution images of Saturn toward the end of and Voyager 2 sent back even more images in August Pingback: Goodbye, Cassini — debeysklenar.
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