Saturn
Ownership: UCP
System: Sol system
Diameter: 116 464 km
Location: Alpha Quadrant
Conditions
Cloudtop temperature: -180 C
Data indicates major terraforming operation has taken place.
Orbital parameters
Distance from primary: 1 426 980 000 km
Orbital period: 29.46 years
Rotation period: 10 hours 40 minutes
Moon system
Saturn has the most elaborate moon system in the solar system, with around 60 satellites ranging from planet-sized bodies with their own atmospheres to rocks just a few kilometers in diameter. Some of them are known as "shephard moons" because their gravitational influence keeps the particles of the ring system organized.
List of moons
- Albiorix, prograde irregular satellite
- Atlas, tiny shepherd moon, A-ring
- Calypso, small irregular co-orbital
- Daphnis, tiny shepherd moon between rings
- Dione
- Encladys
- Epimetheus, small water-ice body
- Erriapo
- Frank, tiny irregular body
- Helene
- Hyperion, small peculiar "spongy" body
- Iapetus, roughly spherical satellite
- Ijiraq
- Janus, small rocky body
- Kiviuq
- Methone
- Mundilfari
- Mimas, small inner moon
- Narvi
- Paaliaq
- Pallene
- Pan, tiny shephard moon between rings
- Pandora
- Phoebe, small body with a retrograde orbit
- Polydeuces
- Prometheus, small irregularly shaped body
- Rhea
- Siarnaq
- Skathi
- Suttungr
- Tarvos
- Telesto
- Tethys, major moon with barren surface
- Thrymr
- Titan, major moon with an atmosphere, colonized
- Ymir
Ring system
Saturn's rings are enormous structures. The seven main rings are labelled in the order they were discovered. From the planet outward, they are D, C, B, A, F, G and E.
All the ring features appear to be populated by a broad range of particle sizes that extend to many metres in diameter at the upper end. At the lower end, particles of about 5 cm in diameter or less seemed to be scarce in ring B and inner ring A. However, in ring C and outer ring A, particles of less than about 5 cm in diameter seem to be abundant.
Inner and outer parts of ring B contain internal rings that are hundreds of kilometres wide and vary greatly in the amount of material they contain. A thick, 5,000 km wide core of ring B contains several bands with ring material nearly four times as dense as that of ring A, and nearly 20 times as dense as that of ring C.
The dramatically varying structure of ring B is in sharp contrast to the relatively flat structure of ring A or the gentle, wavy structure of ring C, where many dense, narrow and sharp-edged ringlets permeate its outer part.
There are also more than 40 rippled features called "density waves" in ring A, many near its outer region, close to the moons that orbit just outside the ring. A major density wave is also seen in the dense ring B.
Ring G is a tenuous 7 000 kilometer wide band of dust-sized icy particles lying beyond the F ring by 27 000 kilometers. The particles in the G ring are confined to their position through gravitational interaction with Saturn's moon Mimas. Micrometeoroids collide with the particles, and release even smaller, dust-sized particles. The plasma field generated by Saturn's magnetic field sweeps through the cloud of particles, and pulls out the finest ones, creating the G ring.
The south polar geysers of Saturn's moon Enceladus may be the primary source of material for ring E.
If all of the particles that make up Saturns rings were gathered together, they would form a sphere about 120 miles in diameter.
