The Planet Saturn

have you ever looked up before perhaps through binoculars or through a telescope and seen a planet with a beautiful and odd inspiring ring system or perhaps you've experienced this through a picture that you found online you are likely already thinking of the one I describing here without me even naming it and while there is more than one planet in our solar system with rings none of them are quite like the sixth planet planet from our sun this is cup of science Joe and today I'm here to talk about my favorite planet the gas giant Saturn and we will explore the planet itself its unique rings and some interesting things about the saturnian system now Saturn comes in at about 886 million miles from the Sun and as I mentioned earlier it's the sixth planet in our solar system and like Jupiter it is huge big massive though not quite by as much Saturn is about 75,000 m in diameter making it around 9 times wider than Earth and if we wanted to fill Saturn with Earths we would need 764 of them or so Saturn is the farthest planet we can see with the uned eye this means it was not really discovered in any way that we have recorded and has instead been known since Antiquity it is named for the Roman god of Agriculture and wealth who was also the father of Jupiter fitting as that in Mass anyway the son overtook his father but in my opinion he didn't overtake him in Majesty being a gas giant Saturn itself is not conducive for any form of Life as We Know It the pressures temperatures and materials that characterize the planet are likely too extreme for any sort of life to form not only that but with no hard surface like the terrestrial planets anything that was there would need to be able to move through the atmosphere lest it fall towards the core until being crushed or immobilized this would go for us in a spaceship too if we were to visit Saturn Not only would we have nowhere to land but if we flew too far into the planet we would be crushed and vaporized now while we have likely ruled out the planet itself in terms of the ability to support life we can't rule out the system as Saturn has moons potentially possessing subsurface oceans which could have a chance of harboring life more on that one later now have you ever wondered how Saturn got its impressive ring system the prevailing thought here is that they are composed of pieces of comets asteroids and shattered moons that broke apart before they reached the planet getting torn apart by its powerful gravity they are made up of billions of small chunks of ice and rock sometimes coated with other materials such as dust and these particles in the Rings they can vary in size quite a bit from as small as a tiny dust-sized icy grain to chunks as big as a house and it even goes up from there there are a few particles or chunks whatever you want to call them that are as large as mountains now if you were to be situated in Saturn's Cloud deck and you were to look out towards the Rings they would appear to be mostly white the ring system is wide as well but relatively thin in comparison it extends out about 175,000 mil from the planet yet their vertical height is a mere 30 ft that is quite a difference and because they are so thin there are times when we are oriented in a way with Saturn such that they effectively disappear from our view when we try to look at it this is because during these times we are Edge on to the Rings instead of seeing them at an angle in total Saturn has eight rings that make up its overall ring system like its giant counterpart Jupiter and also our sun Saturn is made up mostly of hydrogen and helium now its core is dense and made of metals such as iron and nickel this is surrounded by a rocky material and other compounds that have been solidified by the intense pressure and heat and then this whole core is then enveloped by liquid metallic hydrogen that's inside of a layer of liquid hydrogen and I like I mentioned before I really think that the this progression down towards the core changes those States not only because of what's it what it's made of but because of how much increased pressure is put on the next layer now this next part might be kind of hard to imagine but Saturn is the only planet in our solar system with an average density less than water this means if you had a gargantuan bathtub filled up Saturn could float in it like a toy like a duck like a rubber duck Saturn is blanketed with clouds that appear as faint Stripes jet streams and storms are making this this makes the planet many different shades of yellow brown and gray the winds here on Saturn are quite fast as well in the equatorial region of the upper atmosphere these winds can reach up to 1,600 ft per second really fast for a point of comparison the strongest hurricane force winds that Earth experiences top out at 360 ft per second so quite a difference there and Saturn's North Pole has an interesting feature a six sided jet stream that makes like a hexagon pattern this hexagon shaped pattern was first noticed by the Voyager One spacecraft and it has since been more closely observed by Cassini the jet stream itself spans about 20,000 mil and is somewhat wavy in nature the winds here are around 200 mph with a massive rotating storm at the center from what I could find there are no other weather features like this anywhere else in our solar system just adding to the uniqueness of the planet itself now as I mentioned earlier Saturn itself is likely unable to support life but this is not the case for some of its moons and there is one moon in particular that I would like to touch on today the moon known as Enceladus now there are a few worlds in our solar system that are quite as compelling as Enceladus a small handful of them are thought to have liquid oceans such as Jupiter's moon Europa and these liquid oceans would be found beneath their thick icy shell but Enceladus takes this one step further for us and sprays its ocean out into space this gives us an opportunity to sample it with spacecraft in fact this has already been done by the Cassini Mission now I think this Moon along with some others from the saturnian system really do deserve a video of their own but what we've gone over here briefly will help lead us into what I would like to leave you all with today and that is even if a planet itself is not fit to host Life as we know it one I just find it exciting to explore and learn about the planets themselves but it also does not mean we should rule out its overall systems or moons we just might discover life outside of Earth in a place we may not have originally expected this is why I believe it's important for us to study and research not only our solar system but space and the rest of the universe as well now if you would like to learn more about another one of the gas giants in our Solar System Jupiter then check out this video right here otherwise I implore you to step outside tonight and look towards the Stars

Channel: Cuppa Science Joe

Views: 75

Keywords: Space, Solar System, Saturn, Astronomy, Astronomer, NASA, Planet, Moon

Id: flF0wZYangE

Length: 9min 31sec (571 seconds)

Published: Mon May 06 2024