Explore Planets.im
saturn.planets.im
The big facts page

136 Saturn facts, all checked

Every fact on this site in one place, each linked to its NASA, ESA, JPL or USGS source. Our build checks each one against the source text; see the sources page. Things that can change carry the date we checked them.

About the numbers

Most Saturn numbers here come straight from NASA’s Saturn facts page and NASA’s Saturn fact sheets. Sometimes official pages disagree, and when they do we show both rather than pick one quietly. Moons: NASA’s Saturn moons page says 293 confirmed (as of August 2026), while NASA’s Saturn facts page, NASA’s fact sheet, NASA Space Place and ESA still say 274. Winds near the equator: 500 m a second on NASA’s facts page, up to 400 m a second on NASA’s fact sheet. Distance from the Sun: 9.5 AU (NASA), 9.6 AU (ESA). The Cassini Division: found in 1675 (NASA) or 1676 (ESA). Titan: NASA’s facts page says it is thought to have an ocean under its ice; a NASA-led study in December 2025 suggests it may not have a global one. Counts and mission news change, so they carry the date we checked them.

Jump to: The basics | Size and distance | Days and years | Gravity, air and temperature | Inside Saturn | Weather, the hexagon and the decagon | The rings | The moons | Titan | Enceladus | The smaller big moons | Missions

The basics

  1. 1 Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun, and the second largest in the solar system. NASA Science: Saturn facts
  2. 2 Like Jupiter, Saturn is mostly hydrogen and helium, the same two main ingredients as the Sun. NASA Science: Saturn facts
  3. 3 Saturn took shape about 4.5 billion years ago, with the rest of the solar system, and settled into its present place about 4 billion years ago. NASA Science: Saturn facts
  4. 4 Saturn is the only planet whose average density is less than water’s. NASA says it could float in a bathtub, if a bath that big existed. NASA Science: Saturn facts
  5. 5 Saturn is named after the Roman god of farming and wealth, who was also the father of Jupiter. NASA Science: Saturn facts
  6. 6 Saturn is the farthest planet from Earth that was discovered with the unaided eye, and it has been known since ancient times. NASA Science: Saturn facts
  7. 7 The oldest written records of Saturn come from the Assyrians, around 700 BCE, who called it the “Star of Ninib”. NASA Science: Saturn exploration
  8. 8 Around 400 BCE Greek astronomers named it after Kronos, god of farming. The Romans later swapped in their own god of farming: Saturn. NASA Science: Saturn exploration
  9. 9 Galileo saw the rings through a telescope in July 1610 but took them for a “triple planet”. NASA Science: Saturn exploration ESA: Saturn’s rings
  10. 10 At first Galileo wondered if he was looking at three planets, or a planet with handles. NASA Space Place: All about Saturn
  11. 11 Saturn itself is a poor place for life, but two of its moons, Enceladus and Titan, have internal oceans and could possibly support it. NASA Science: Saturn facts · checked 27 Oct 2026

Size and distance

  1. 12 Saturn is about 120,500 km wide at its equator: 9 times wider than Earth. NASA Science: Saturn facts
  2. 13 If Earth were the size of a nickel (a US 5-cent coin), Saturn would be about as big as a volleyball. NASA Science: Saturn facts
  3. 14 Saturn has 95.16 times Earth’s mass, and Earth would fit inside it about 763 times by volume. NASA NSSDC: Saturn fact sheet
  4. 15 Saturn is visibly squashed: 60,268 km from centre to equator but 54,364 km from centre to pole. NASA NSSDC: Saturn fact sheet
  5. 16 ESA says Saturn is flattened at the poles because it spins so fast. ESA: Facts about Saturn
  6. 17 Saturn’s average density is 687 kg per cubic metre. Earth’s is 5,513. NASA NSSDC: Saturn fact sheet
  7. 18 NASA’s Saturn facts page puts Saturn an average 1.4 billion km from the Sun: 9.5 astronomical units (1 AU is the Sun–Earth distance). NASA Science: Saturn facts
  8. 19 ESA gives a mean distance of 1,429,400,000 km, or 9.6 AU. ESA: Facts about Saturn
  9. 20 NASA’s fact sheet gives Saturn’s orbit a semimajor axis of 1,432.041 million km. NASA NSSDC: Saturn fact sheet
  10. 21 Sunlight takes 80 minutes to reach Saturn. NASA Science: Saturn facts
  11. 22 Saturn comes as close as 1,205.5 million km to Earth and gets as far as 1,658.6 million km. NASA NSSDC: Saturn fact sheet

Days and years

  1. 23 Saturn has the second-shortest day in the solar system: about 10.7 hours. NASA Science: Saturn facts
  2. 24 NASA’s fact sheet gives the length of a Saturn day as 10.656 hours. NASA NSSDC: Saturn fact sheet
  3. 25 One trip round the Sun, a Saturn year, takes 10,755.699 Earth days. NASA NSSDC: Saturn fact sheet
  4. 26 That is about 29.4 Earth years. NASA Science: Saturn facts
  5. 27 Saturn is tilted by 26.73 degrees, not far off Earth’s 23.5, so like Earth it has seasons. NASA Science: Saturn facts

Gravity, air and temperature

  1. 28 At Saturn’s 1-bar cloud level, gravity on average is 1.140 times Earth’s. NASA NSSDC: Saturn fact sheet
  2. 29 Spin and squash make a difference: gravity is 0.916 times Earth’s at Saturn’s equator and 1.235 times at its poles. NASA NSSDC: Saturn fact sheet
  3. 30 To escape Saturn’s gravity you would need to go 35.5 km a second. NASA NSSDC: Saturn fact sheet
  4. 31 Saturn has no true surface. It is mostly swirling gases, and liquids deeper down. NASA Science: Saturn facts
  5. 32 The pressure and heat deep inside would crush, melt and vaporise any spacecraft trying to fly in. NASA Science: Saturn facts
  6. 33 ESA notes a craft could drift down on a parachute and send data until the pressure crushed it. In the end, that was Cassini’s fate. ESA: Facts about Saturn
  7. 34 At the 1-bar level, Saturn’s air is −139 °C. NASA NSSDC: Saturn fact sheet
  8. 35 Saturn’s atmosphere is 96.3% hydrogen and 3.25% helium, by volume. NASA NSSDC: Saturn fact sheet
  9. 36 Saturn’s clouds show as faint stripes, jet streams and storms, in shades of yellow, brown and grey. NASA Science: Saturn facts

Inside Saturn

  1. 37 At the centre is a dense core of metals like iron and nickel, wrapped in rock, then liquid metallic hydrogen. NASA Science: Saturn facts
  2. 38 Saturn’s magnetic field is smaller than Jupiter’s but still 578 times as powerful as Earth’s. NASA Science: Saturn facts
  3. 39 Cassini showed some of Saturn’s auroras are driven not by the solar wind but by particles from its moons and the planet’s fast-spinning magnetic field. NASA Science: Saturn facts

Weather, the hexagon and the decagon

  1. 40 NASA’s Saturn facts page says winds in the upper atmosphere reach 500 m a second near the equator. Earth’s strongest hurricane winds top out at about 110 m a second. NASA Science: Saturn facts
  2. 41 NASA’s fact sheet gives wind speeds of up to 400 m a second within 30 degrees of the equator, and up to 150 m a second further north and south. NASA NSSDC: Saturn fact sheet
  3. 42 Saturn’s north pole has a six-sided jet stream, first noticed in Voyager pictures in the early 1980s. NASA Science: Saturn facts
  4. 43 The hexagon is about 30,000 km across, a wavy jet stream of 322 km/h winds with a huge spinning storm in the middle. NASA Science: Saturn facts
  5. 44 New in 2026: Hubble found a giant, changing, 10-sided wave circling Saturn’s south pole. The study was published in September 2026, using observations going back to 2023. NASA Science: Saturn facts · checked 27 Oct 2026
  6. 45 It is the first time a large, regular-sided jet pattern has been seen in Saturn’s southern half. NASA Science: Saturn facts · checked 27 Oct 2026

The rings

  1. 46 Saturn’s rings are thought to be pieces of comets, asteroids or shattered moons, torn apart by Saturn’s gravity before they reached the planet. NASA Science: Saturn facts
  2. 47 They are billions of chunks of ice and rock, mostly from dust-sized grains to pieces as big as a house. A few are as big as mountains. NASA Science: Saturn facts
  3. 48 ESA says the ring particles are mainly water ice, from microns to metres in size. ESA: Saturn’s rings
  4. 49 Seen from Saturn’s cloud tops, the rings would look mostly white. Each ring goes round at a different speed. NASA Science: Saturn facts
  5. 50 The ring system reaches up to 282,000 km from the planet, yet the main rings are typically only about 10 m thick. NASA Science: Saturn facts
  6. 51 NASA’s rings fact sheet gives each ring’s edges, measured from Saturn’s centre: D ring 66,900 to 74,510 km, C ring 74,658 to 91,975 km, B ring 91,975 to 117,507 km, A ring 122,340 to 136,780 km, F ring 139,826 km, G ring 166,000 to 173,000 km and E ring 180,000 to 480,000 km. NASA NSSDC: Saturnian rings fact sheet
  7. 52 NASA’s rings fact sheet puts the outer edge of the faint E ring 480,000 km from Saturn’s centre. NASA NSSDC: Saturnian rings fact sheet
  8. 53 Going outwards from Saturn: the D ring, C ring, B ring, the Cassini Division, then the A, F, G and E rings. NASA Science: Saturn facts
  9. 54 The main rings are A, B and C. D, E, F and G are fainter and were found more recently. They are named in the order they were discovered. NASA Science: Saturn facts
  10. 55 NASA Space Place counts seven main rings, with spaces between them. NASA Space Place: All about Saturn
  11. 56 The Cassini Division, the gap between the A and B rings, is 4,700 km wide. NASA Science: Saturn facts
  12. 57 NASA dates the discovery of the Cassini Division to 1675, by Jean-Dominique Cassini. NASA Science: Saturn exploration
  13. 58 ESA’s rings page dates the same discovery to 1676. ESA: Saturn’s rings
  14. 59 In 1655 Christiaan Huygens worked out that the “ears” were rings, and found Saturn’s biggest moon, Titan. NASA Science: Saturn exploration ESA: Saturn’s rings
  15. 60 Much further out is the very faint Phoebe ring, in the orbit of the moon Phoebe. NASA Science: Saturn facts
  16. 61 In 2009, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope found a gigantic, low-density ring linked to the distant moon Phoebe. NASA Science: Saturn exploration
  17. 62 Cassini studied “spokes” in the rings, which can be longer than Earth is wide. NASA Science: Cassini ring science
  18. 63 Cassini also found “propellers” in the rings, made by moonlets: lumps of ring material. Despite the name, they don’t spin. NASA Science: Cassini ring science
  19. 64 NASA’s rings fact sheet gives thicknesses of about 5 m for the C ring, 5–10 m for the B ring and 10–30 m for the A ring. NASA NSSDC: Saturnian rings fact sheet
  20. 65 Every so often Earth passes through the plane of the rings and they almost vanish edge-on. Hubble caught it on 22 May 1995. NASA Science: Hubble views Saturn ring-plane crossing
  21. 66 One part of NASA’s Hubble page says these ring-plane crossings happen about every 15 years; another says on 13 to 16 year intervals. NASA Science: Hubble views Saturn ring-plane crossing
  22. 67 The crossing on 23 March 2025 was a poor one to watch: Saturn was only 10 degrees from the Sun in the sky. The next good edge-on views come with the triple passage of 2038–39. NASA Science: Hubble views Saturn ring-plane crossing

The moons

  1. 68 Saturn has 293 confirmed moons as of August 2026, says NASA’s Saturn moons page: more than any other planet. NASA Science: Saturn moons · checked 27 Oct 2026
  2. 69 NASA’s Saturn facts page, NASA’s fact sheet, NASA Space Place and ESA still give 274, the count after 128 new moons were announced in March 2025. NASA Science: Saturn facts · checked 27 Oct 2026 NASA NSSDC: Saturn fact sheet · checked 27 Oct 2026 NASA Space Place: All about Saturn · checked 27 Oct 2026 ESA: Facts about Saturn · checked 27 Oct 2026 NASA NSSDC: Saturnian satellite fact sheet · checked 27 Oct 2026
  3. 70 NASA’s main Saturn page just says “dozens of officially recognised moons”. NASA Science: Saturn · checked 27 Oct 2026
  4. 71 They range from Titan, bigger than the planet Mercury, to moons as small as a sports arena. NASA Science: Saturn moons
  5. 72 Some small ones are shaped like potatoes or ravioli. NASA Science: Saturn moons
  6. 73 Saturn’s moons were first named after Titans from Greek and Roman myth. Newer ones take names from Gallic, Inuit and Norse stories too. NASA Science: Phoebe
  7. 74 How long the big moons take to go round Saturn, in Earth days: Mimas 0.942, Enceladus 1.370, Tethys 1.888, Dione 2.737, Rhea 4.518, Titan 15.945. NASA NSSDC: Saturnian satellite fact sheet
  8. 75 Their sizes, as radii in km (most are not perfectly round): Mimas 208 × 197 × 191, Enceladus 257 × 251 × 248, Tethys 538 × 528 × 526, Dione 563 × 561 × 560, Rhea 765 × 763 × 762 and Titan 2,575. NASA NSSDC: Saturnian satellite fact sheet
  9. 76 Average distance from Saturn’s centre, in thousands of km: Mimas 185.52, Enceladus 238.02, Tethys 294.66, Dione 377.40, Rhea 527.04, Titan 1,221.87. NASA NSSDC: Saturnian satellite fact sheet
  10. 77 Moon densities in kg per cubic metre: Mimas 1,150, Enceladus 1,610, Tethys 985, Dione 1,480, Rhea 1,240, Titan 1,880, Hyperion 550, Iapetus 1,090, Phoebe 1,640. NASA NSSDC: Saturnian satellite fact sheet
  11. 78 Water is roughly 1 gram per millilitre: 1,000 kg per cubic metre. USGS Water Science School: Water density
  12. 79 NASA’s Tethys page says its density is 0.97 times that of water, suggesting it is almost all water ice. NASA Science: Tethys

Titan

  1. 80 Titan is Saturn’s largest moon, and the only moon known to have a substantial atmosphere. NASA Science: Titan facts
  2. 81 Titan is the only place besides Earth known to have liquids on its surface: rain, rivers, lakes and seas of methane and ethane. NASA Science: Titan facts
  3. 82 Only Jupiter’s Ganymede is bigger, by just 2 percent. Titan is bigger than our Moon and even the planet Mercury. NASA Science: Titan facts
  4. 83 Titan’s radius is about 2,575 km, nearly 50 percent wider than our Moon. NASA Science: Titan facts
  5. 84 Christiaan Huygens discovered Titan on 25 March 1655 and called it “Luna Saturni”: Saturn’s moon. The name Titan came later, from John Herschel. NASA Science: Titan facts
  6. 85 Titan takes 15 days and 22 hours to go round Saturn, always showing it the same face. NASA Science: Titan facts
  7. 86 Titan’s seasons each last more than seven Earth years. NASA Science: Titan facts
  8. 87 It is −179 °C on Titan, so cold that water ice plays the part of rock. NASA Science: Titan facts
  9. 88 Titan’s air presses down about 60 percent harder than Earth’s, and reaches about 600 km up: 10 times higher than ours. NASA Science: Titan facts
  10. 89 It is about 95 percent nitrogen and 5 percent methane. NASA Science: Titan facts
  11. 90 Titan has dunes, and the “sand” is dark hydrocarbon grains thought to look like coffee grounds. NASA Science: Titan facts
  12. 91 NASA’s Titan facts page says Titan is thought to have a subsurface ocean of water. NASA Science: Titan facts · checked 27 Oct 2026
  13. 92 But a NASA-led study in December 2025, reanalysing Cassini data, suggests Titan may not have a global ocean: more likely ice, layers of slush and pockets of water possibly as warm as 20 °C. NASA: Study suggests Titan may not have a global ocean (Dec 2025) · checked 27 Oct 2026
  14. 93 Cassini-Huygens revealed Titan’s lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane, topped up by rain from hydrocarbon clouds. NASA Science: Cassini Titan science

Enceladus

  1. 94 In 2005 Cassini found icy water particles and gas gushing from Enceladus at about 400 m a second. NASA Science: Enceladus
  2. 95 The jets come from warm cracks that scientists call the “tiger stripes”. NASA Science: Enceladus
  3. 96 Enceladus has a global ocean under its ice. NASA Science: Saturn moons
  4. 97 The ice is thought to average 20 to 25 km thick, but may be just 1 to 5 km thick at the south pole. NASA Science: Enceladus
  5. 98 Enceladus is about 500 km across and the most reflective body in the solar system. NASA Science: Enceladus
  6. 99 Because it reflects so much sunlight, its surface is about −201 °C. NASA Science: Enceladus
  7. 100 Its spray spreads out round its orbit to make Saturn’s E ring. NASA Science: Enceladus
  8. 101 Tiny grains of silica in the E ring point to hydrothermal vents deep under Enceladus’s ice, like those on Earth’s ocean floor. NASA Science: Enceladus
  9. 102 Enceladus goes round Saturn twice for every once that Dione does. NASA Science: Enceladus
  10. 103 William Herschel spotted Enceladus on 28 August 1789. NASA Science: Enceladus

The smaller big moons

  1. 104 Mimas is the smallest and innermost of Saturn’s major moons, about 394 km across on average. NASA Science: Mimas
  2. 105 Its Herschel Crater is 130 km across, a third of the moon’s width, which makes Mimas look like the Death Star from Star Wars. NASA Science: Mimas
  3. 106 William Herschel discovered Mimas on 17 September 1789. NASA Science: Mimas
  4. 107 Iapetus is the “yin and yang” moon: one side is as dark as coal, the other much brighter. NASA Science: Iapetus
  5. 108 Iapetus also has a chain of 10 km-high mountains running round its equator. NASA Science: Iapetus
  6. 109 Giovanni Cassini discovered Iapetus on 25 October 1671. NASA Science: Iapetus
  7. 110 Hyperion tumbles chaotically and unpredictably as it orbits, and its surface looks rather like a sponge. NASA Science: Hyperion
  8. 111 Phoebe goes round Saturn backwards, compared with most moons, and reflects only 6 percent of the sunlight it gets. It is most likely a captured object. NASA Science: Phoebe
  9. 112 Phoebe was the first thing Cassini met on arrival, with a flyby on 11 June 2004. NASA Science: Phoebe
  10. 113 Tethys has Odysseus Crater, 400 km wide, and a valley, Ithaca Chasma, that runs about 2,000 km. NASA Science: Tethys

Missions

  1. 114 Pioneer 11, launched on 6 April 1973, was the first spacecraft to fly by Saturn, on 1 September 1979. NASA Science: Pioneer 11
  2. 115 Among Pioneer 11’s finds were Saturn’s F ring and a new moon. NASA Science: Saturn exploration
  3. 116 Pioneer 11 is now leaving the solar system and will pass near the star Lambda Aquila in almost four million years. NASA Science: Pioneer 11
  4. 117 Voyager 1 flew past on 12 November 1980, 126,000 km away, and found five new moons and the G ring. NASA Science: Voyager 1
  5. 118 Voyager 1 showed the rings are made of thousands of ringlets. NASA Science: Saturn exploration
  6. 119 Voyager 2 flew past on 25 August 1981. NASA Science: Voyager 2
  7. 120 The twin Voyagers flew by nine months apart, in 1980 and 1981. NASA Science: Saturn
  8. 121 Four robotic spacecraft have visited Saturn. NASA Science: Saturn
  9. 122 Cassini launched on 15 October 1997 on a Titan IVB rocket, carrying ESA’s Huygens probe. NASA Science: Saturn NASA Science: Cassini Grand Finale overview
  10. 123 On its way, the 5.6-tonne Cassini-Huygens swung past Venus twice, Earth once and Jupiter once for gravity boosts. ESA: Cassini-Huygens factsheet
  11. 124 Cassini-Huygens was the largest interplanetary spacecraft ever built. ESA: Cassini-Huygens factsheet
  12. 125 Cassini became the first spacecraft to orbit Saturn, on 1 July 2004. NASA Science: Saturn exploration
  13. 126 NASA’s Grand Finale page gives the arrival as 30 June 2004, in US Pacific Daylight Time. NASA Science: Cassini Grand Finale overview
  14. 127 On 14 January 2005, ESA’s Huygens probe made the first soft landing on another planet’s moon: Titan. It sent the first and only pictures from Titan’s surface. NASA Science: Saturn exploration
  15. 128 Huygens’ heat shield was built to cope with up to 18,000 °C. ESA: Cassini-Huygens factsheet
  16. 129 Cassini by the numbers: 294 orbits, 162 targeted moon flybys, 453,048 images, 6 named moons discovered, 7.9 billion km travelled and 27 nations taking part. NASA Science: Cassini quick facts
  17. 130 On 19 July 2013 Cassini slipped into Saturn’s shadow and photographed Saturn, seven of its moons, its inner rings and, far in the background, Earth. People on Earth were told in advance for the first time ever. NASA Science: The Day the Earth Smiled
  18. 131 From April 2017, Cassini made 22 dives through the roughly 2,000 km gap between Saturn and its rings, where no spacecraft had been. NASA Science: Cassini Grand Finale overview
  19. 132 On 15 September 2017 Cassini ended its 13-year orbital mission with a planned plunge into Saturn, sending science data to the last second. NASA Science: Saturn exploration
  20. 133 It was low on fuel, and NASA chose to end it in Saturn so it could never contaminate Enceladus or Titan. NASA Science: Cassini Grand Finale overview
  21. 134 Next: NASA’s Dragonfly, the first rotorcraft to explore another world, is due to launch no earlier than July 2028 and arrive at Titan in late 2034, for a planned 3.3-year mission. NASA Science: Dragonfly · checked 27 Oct 2026
  22. 135 NASA’s Titan page puts it more simply: launch in 2028, and three years of landings. NASA Science: Titan · checked 27 Oct 2026
  23. 136 Dragonfly should make one flight every 1 to 2 Titan days. A Titan day, a “Tsol”, lasts about 16 Earth days. NASA Science: Dragonfly · checked 27 Oct 2026