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Select > Who • What • When • Where • Which |
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Saturn, The Sixth Planet > 
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest. In Roman mythology, Saturn is the god of agriculture. The associated Greek god, Cronus, was the son of Uranus and Gaia and the father of Zeus (Jupiter). Saturn is the root of the English word "Saturday"
Saturn has been known since prehistoric times. Galileo was the first to observe it with a telescope in 1610; he noted its odd appearance but was confused by it. Early observations of Saturn were complicated by the fact that the Earth passes through the plane of Saturn's rings every few years as Saturn moves in its orbit. A low resolution image of Saturn therefore changes drastically. It was not until 1659 that Christiaan Huygens correctly inferred the geometry of the rings. Saturn's rings remained unique in the known solar system until 1977 when very faint rings were discovered around Uranus (and shortly thereafter around Jupiter and Neptune).
Saturn was first visited by NASA's Pioneer 11 in 1979 and later by Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. Cassini (a joint NASA / ESA project) arrived on July 1, 2004 and will orbit Saturn for at least four years.
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More on this Website >
• http://www.nineplanets.org/saturn.html
• articles and resources about lv saturn • Edit
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BIG BANG : Formation of the Universe
Ca. 13.7 billion years ago: Universe, which includes time and space, begins with Big Bang. The Big Bang is dated according to NASA. 300 thousand years after the Big Bang,... |
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Univers
The Universe today is very different from the Universe of the past and of the future. However, we can discover much about the past and the future from what we can current... |
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Venus : the Second Planet
Venus is the second planet from the Sun and the sixth largest. On June 8 2004, Venus will pass directly between the Earth and the Sun, appearing as a large black dot trav... |
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Galileo Timeline
A detailed chronology of Galileo's life. Galileo invented many mechanical devices other than the pump, such as the hydrostatic balance. But perhaps his most famous invent... |
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Giovanni Cassini, Astronomer
Giovanni Domenico Cassini studied mathematics and astronomy at the Jesuits and became professor of astronomy at Bologna, as well as fortress builder, at age 25. There, he... |
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Christiaan Huygens, Dutch Scientist
Christiaan Huygens came from an important Dutch family. Huygens's first publications in 1651 and 1654 considered mathematical problems. The 1651 publication Cyclometriae... |
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Gerard Kuiper, Astronomer
Kuiper is considered to be the father of modern planetary science for his wide ranging studies of the solar system. Although he contributed to astrophysics, established t... |
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