Saturn
The second giant, with its iconic rings
Summary
Saturn is the second-largest planet in the Solar System and has the most iconic rings. The rings are made of countless pieces of ice and rock; some are the size of dust grains, some as big as houses. Saturn's density is so low that if you could put it in water, it would float.
In depth
Saturn's rings probably formed when a moon that came too close was torn apart inside the planet's Roche limit. They are only 10–100 metres thick, yet 280,000 km across, about 3/4 of the distance from the Earth to the Moon! The Cassini-Huygens mission (1997–2017) studied Saturn and its rings for 20 years and showed that the rings are slowly falling into Saturn and will disappear over millions of years. Saturn has 274 known moons, the largest family in the Solar System. The largest, Titan, is bigger than Mercury and is the only moon with a thick atmosphere (1.5 times Earth's pressure). Its surface has lakes of liquid methane: apart from Earth, the only known world with stable liquid on its surface. The moon Enceladus also has an ocean under its ice and active geysers, making it a candidate for microbial life.
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