ipl-logo

Saturn Research Paper

768 Words4 Pages

Saturn is the second largest planet and sixth number planet of our solar system. Saturn is a gas giant made up of hydrogen and helium. It is big enough to hold more than 760 Earths within it, and is second massive planet after Jupiter, roughly 95 times Earth 's mass. However, Saturn has the lowest density among all the planets of solar system .It spins faster than any other planet except Jupiter which help Saturn with its magnetic field which is about 578 times more powerful than Earth 's. Although Saturn has at least 62 moons but its largest moon, Titan, is slightly bigger than Mercury, and is the second-largest moon in the solar system after Jupiter 's moon Ganymede (our moon is fifth largest).Although it is the most interesting planet …show more content…

The rings were first observed by the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei in 1610 with the help of early less powerful telescope. His telescope wasn 't that good (low resolution) as compare to today’s telescope, though, he able to observe "blobs" on both side of Saturn, which he thought were moons of Saturn. Later in 1656 a Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens able to correctly identified the "blobs" as rings around Saturn. They have allured and perplexed astronomers since they were discovered 400 years ago. Many mathematicians have study the distribution of particles of ice and rock throughout the rings and believe that they are attributes of catastrophic collisions over time. The current rings are more than 90 to 95 per cent water ice, which implies that initially they were almost pure ice because they are continually polluted by rocky …show more content…

The gravitational pull of Saturn and its moons on the ring particles causes some interesting patterns to form in the rings and these patterns are so called “waves” which are really tightly-wound spirals. The gravitational pull of both Saturn and its moon form two types of waves normally on the rings which are "spiral density waves", and "spiral bending waves" (as per the location of the moon around the rings).
Now scientist and researchers are focusing their study toward Saturn’s rings and its moons. This research may help to predict the presence of rings and the source of ice in the rings. This can also explain about the formation of rings around other planets like Uranus, Jupiter and Neptune, and distant asteroids Chiron and Chariklo. It could also help scientists to predict how the rings around planets outside of our own solar system may

Open Document