Mar

27

Beautiful Reaper.

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

March 27, 2007 |

In Roman mythology Saturn was the leader of the Titans, and son of the sky god Uranus. He also swung a mean scythe. As the story goes, Uranus was a tyrant who wouldn’t allow his wife, the Earth goddess Gaia, to give birth to her children. Only Saturn was brave enough to confront him, and nailed big daddy Uranus right in the family jewels. Like father like son, however, and Saturn became a less than model parent. Afraid his own children would force him into early retirement, he swallowed them whole.

Only his youngest son Jupiter, helped by Gaia, escaped taking his dad’s intestinal tour and staged a coup. Jupiter kicked Saturn off the throne, exiled the Titans, and took his own place as king of the gods. Saturn was eventually rehabilitated as god of agriculture. It’s fitting that as the Northern hemisphere moves into Spring you can spot Saturn making its slow, lonely way across the evening sky. Saturn is the second largest planet in our solar system after Jupiter, and is the farthest planet known to ancient astronomers. Its neighbor Uranus wasn’t discovered until 1781.
saturn.jpg

Image courtesy of NASA

Known for its spectacular rings, which span 170,000 miles but are not more than 400 feet thick, Saturn is, like the other gas giants, a planet of extremes. It has no solid surface as we know it, but is a mass of methane and other gases at the top and liquid helium and hydrogen below, possibly turning into metallic hydrogen at the deepest levels and, possibly, a rocky or metallic core. Turbulent storms swirl around the top layers of its atmosphere. At roughly 8,725,000,000 kilometers (that’s about 5,421,463,652 miles) from the Sun a single Saturn year is almost thirty of our years. Saturn also has 47 moons (and counting), including Titan, the largest moon in the solar system. Check out Weather Underground’s Astronomy Section for help finding where in your local night sky Saturn and other planets will appear. And keep looking up.


Comments

1 Comment so far

  1. Little Miss Know it All on March 27, 2007 8:45 am

    Maybe you can come talk to Dylan about Saturn…he got a telescope for Christmas, and really wants to use it properly. He loves Saturn…

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