Saturn stamp

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Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System. The second of the gas giants, Saturn is named after the Roman god of agriculture. When observed through a telescope, Saturn is easily one the most beautiful sights in the night sky: a yellowish-white body with a highly-complex ring system. Its colour stems from ammonia crystals in its upper atmosphere, whereas the rings are made up of particles of ice, rock and dust which reflect sunlight. Like Jupiter, Saturn is home to incredibly powerful storms, reaching wind speeds of 1,800 km/h. Titan is the largest of Saturn’s many moons, a world protected by a thick atmosphere of nitrogen and methane and displaying seas, oceans and vast polar caps. Unlike Earth however, these are made up of methane instead of water. The Saturnian system has been visited several times by spacecraft from Earth, most prominently the Pioneer 11, Voyager 1 and 2, and more recently the Cassini-Huygens probe.

Aphelion: 1,513,325,783 km
Perihelion: 1,353,572,956 km
Diameter at equator: 120,536 km
Rotation period (1 day): 10 Earth hours
Orbital period (1 year): 29 Earth years
Av. orbital speed: 9.69 km/s
Av. surface temperature (*): -178°C
Mass (Earth = 1): 95
Satellites: 150 confirmed, 53 named (cf. Titan, Rhea, Enceladus, Dione, Tethys, Mimas)


(*) Saturn has no solid surface: the average temperature denoted is that in its upper cloud layer.

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