Planet with rings - amazing Saturn

Saturn - a large celestial body, located in sixth place from the Sun. Known this planet with rings since ancient times. Saturn is one of the giant planets that make up the solar system.

General information

The planet, which has rings, is 1.43 billion kilometers away from the Sun. This distance is almost 9.5 times more than from our planet to the star. Sirius makes a turn around our luminary for 29.4 Earth years.

Saturn is a unique planet. He is 95 times heavier than Earth. At the same time, in diameter, it is 9 times larger. The density is 0.69 g / cc. Cm is lower than that of water. If we assume that in the cosmos there is an endless ocean, Sirius would be able to swim in it! All other planets of the system are denser than water - some are insignificant, some are much. Such a low density and thus very fast rotation around its axis compress the planet more than any other. Its radius at the equator is almost 11% greater than at the poles. Such a strong compression can not be overlooked in a telescope - the planet is visible oblate, not round.

A planet with rings does not have a solid surface. What the surface seems to be from the Earth is actually clouds. The top layer is frozen ammonia, below are the hydrosulfidammonium clouds. The deeper you dive into the atmosphere of Saturn, the hotter it becomes, and the density gets higher. Approximately in the middle of the radius, hydrogen becomes metallic.

Rings

It used to be that Saturn is the only planet in the solar system that has rings. However, today it is known that this statement is incorrect. All four gas giants have rings. But it's not for nothing that Saturn is known to us as a planet with rings. The fact is that it has the most significant, unique and noticeable rings, other planets do not always see them and not in any telescope.

As Huygens suggested in 1659, these same rings are not just one solid body, they are billions of billions of very small particles rotating around a circle.

In total around Saturn there are four rings - three basic and one hardly noticeable. All rings reflect light more than the planet itself. The central ring is the brightest and widest, it is separated from the outer ring by the Cassini slot, which is almost 4,000 kilometers. In this slot there are translucent rings. The outer ring is divided by the Encke strip. The inner ring is almost a haze, so it is transparent.

In reality, these rings are very thin. Their thickness is less than a thousand meters, although the diameter is more than 250 kilometers. It seems that these rings are very powerful and bulky, but it was calculated that if you collect all the stuff that makes up them, in one "pile", the diameter of this body will not be more than 100 km.

The images transmitted to us by the probes make it clear that the rings consist of many small rings reminiscent of the tracks of the records. Most of the particles that make up the rings do not exceed a few centimeters. Few of them are more than a few meters away. And only one or two kilometers. Most likely, all of them consist of ice or a substance similar to a stone, but covered with ice.

Scientists are not sure of the origin of the rings. There is a version that they arose simultaneously with the planet itself. In any case, the matter that makes up the rings is constantly replaced, replenishing, perhaps, by destroying small satellites.

Satellites

By the end of February 2010, it was known about 62 satellites of Saturn. Most of them rotate around their axis at the same speed as around the planet, so they are always turned towards it by one side.

The largest satellite of Saturn is Titan. At the moment there is a version that now on Titan conditions are similar to those that were 4 billion years ago on Earth, when life was barely born.

Between satellites and rings, complete consistency is observed. Some of them, according to scientists, are "shepherds" for the rings, keeping them in their places.

Research

The planet with the rings interested people in 1609, when Galileo began to observe her. Since then, studies of the planet have been conducted from many telescopes, and in 1997 a research apparatus was launched. In July 2004, he entered the orbit of the planet. In addition, the probe "Huygens" descended to Titan to study its surface.

Interesting

The planet, surrounded by rings, does not have a solid surface. Its density is lower than that of all bodies in the solar system. The planet consists of the lightest elements of the Mendeleev-helium and hydrogen system.

The clouds of Saturn form an almost regular hexagon. This was discovered back in 1980 by the Voyager passing by. Such a phenomenon was not observed in any other place in the solar system. Moreover, this form of cloud on the north pole of the planet has been preserved for 20 years.

The North Pole of Saturn can boast a polar aurora that scientists have never seen in other places. Their uniqueness is not only that the light itself is blue, but the red color reflects on the clouds, but that the radiance covers the entire pole, although only the magnetic poles are on the Jupiter and the Earth. Pictures of the ring auroras of Saturn make it possible to suspect that the particles charged by the Sun are exposed to other magnetic forces, the nature of which has not been studied at the moment.