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Wikipedia Featured ArticleBeyond Earth

Saturn

Sixth planet from the Sun

Cassini captured the 30 frames required to construct this mosaic on 23 July 2008, from a distance of about a million kilometers. About a year before Saturn's equinox, the ring shadows have shifted from where they were early in Cassini's mission to a fat arc a little above the equator.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI / color composite by Gordan Ugarkovic / Public domain ↗
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Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun, and is the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant, with an average radius of about 9 times that of Earth. It has an eighth of the average density of Earth, but is over 95 times more massive. Even though Saturn is almost as big as Jupiter, it has less than a third of its mass. Saturn orbits the Sun at a distance of 9.59 AU (1,434 million km), with an orbital period of 29.45 years.

Saturn's interior is thought to be composed of a rocky core, surrounded by a deep layer of metallic hydrogen, an intermediate layer of liquid hydrogen and liquid helium, and an outer layer of gas. Saturn has a pale yellow hue, due to ammonia crystals in its upper atmosphere. An electrical current in the metallic hydrogen layer is thought to give rise to Saturn's planetary magnetic field, which is weaker than Earth's, but has a magnetic moment 580 times that of Earth because of Saturn's greater size. Saturn's magnetic field strength is about a twentieth that of Jupiter. The outer atmosphere is generally bland and lacking in contrast, although long-lived features can appear. Wind speeds on Saturn can reach 1,800 kilometers per hour (1,100 miles per hour).

From Wikipedia and its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Text reformatted for this reading view.

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