Saturn
The ringed planet — even a small telescope shows its rings.
To the eye Saturn is a steady, pale golden point. It moves slowly: it takes almost 30 years to go once around the Sun, so it stays in the same part of the sky for years.
Its rings are made of countless chunks of ice and rock, most smaller than a house, spread over a band wider than the distance from Earth to the Moon but only about 10 metres thick.
Facts
- Year
- 29.5 Earth years
- Size
- 9 times wider than Earth
- Density
- less than water — it would float in a big enough bathtub