Forthcoming meetings
| Friday, June 07, 2013 |
| 19:30 |
| Strange Weather! Exploring the Giant Planets of our Solar System |
| Dr Leigh Fletcher
(University of Oxford)
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| United Reformed Church Hall, Newbury |
| Note: |
The speaker will be followed by the Society's AGM. |
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| No beginners meetings currently scheduled in the diary. |
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| No observing sessions currently scheduled in the diary. |
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| Society visit to the national space centre |
| Saturday, June 08, 2013 |
| 08:30 |
| National Space Centre, Leicester |
| Note: |
See the home page for details. Contact Ann Davies for more imformation. |
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Planetary information
Click a planet in the list below and the information will be displayed.
Planetary information for Saturn
Saturn was the most distant of the five planets known to the ancients. Like Jupiter, Saturn is made mostly of hydrogen and helium. Its volume is 755 times greater than that of Earth. Winds in the upper atmosphere reach 500 meters (1,600 feet) per second in the equatorial region. These super-fast winds, combined with heat rising from within the planet's interior, cause the yellow and gold bands visible in the atmosphere.
Saturn's spectacular and complex rings are made mostly of water ice. Spacecraft images reveal braided rings, ringlets and spokes - dark features in the rings that circle the planet at different rates from that of the surrounding ring material. Saturn's ring system extends hundreds of thousands of kilometers from the planet, yet the vertical depth is typically about 10 meters (30 feet) in the main rings, although when viewed edge-on there are vertical formations in some rings that seem to pile up in bumps or ridges more than 3 kilometers (2 miles) tall.
Saturn is named for the Roman god of agriculture. |
| |
| Known by the Ancients |
| 6th |
885,904,700 miles
1,426,725,400 kilometres |
838,519,000miles
1,349,467,000 kilometres
9.18 x Earth by comparison |
934,530,000 miles
1,503,983,000 kilometres
9.89 x Earth by comparison |
37,449 miles
60,268 kilometres
9.45 x Earth by comparison |
235,298 miles
378,675 kilometres |
62,526,000,000,000 miles3
62,526,000,000,000 kilometres3
763.60 x Earth by comparison |
568,510,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Kilogrammes
95.16 x Earth by comparison |
0.70 gm3
0.13 x Earth by comparison |
16,782,000,000 miles2
43,466,000,000 kilometres2
85.22 x Earth by comparison |
34.11 feet/second2
10.40 metres/second2
If you weighed 100 pounds on Earth, you would weigh 106 pounds on Saturn |
79,390 miles per hour
127,760 kilometres per hour
3.17 x Earth by comparison |
| 10.656 hours |
| 29.4 Earth years |
21,637 miles per hour
34,821.00 kilomtetres per hour
0.33 x Earth by comparison |
5,421,000,000 miles
8,725,000,000 kilometres
9.44 x Earth by comparison |
0.05°
3.24 x Earth by comparison |
2.484°
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26.73°
1.14 x Earth by comparison
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| -178°C ( -288°F)
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| Hydrogen, Helium |
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