Saturn is the second largest planet in the Solar System. It takes 29.5 Earth years to make a complete orbit of the Sun. It was not long before early astronomers began to realize that Saturn is the most beautiful planet in the Solar System. Even early telescopes revealed a spectacular reign system. Saturn’s rings are made up of thousands of “ringlets” small bits of rock and ice, all held together in an orbit by the planet’s gravity.

Saturn also has at least 23 moons and may have many more. Some moons are within the ring system and are called “shepherd” moons, because they appear to help to keep the ring system in place. Saturn is like a smaller version of Jupiter, its atmosphere consisting manly of hydrogen. Under the clouds, which rotate around the planet every 10 hours, are thick lakes of liquid hydrogen. The rocky core is 12,000 miles (20,000 km) wide.

In 1610, Galileo observed the peculiar appearance of Saturn, but was not able to recognize the true shape of the features on either side of the planet. It was not until almost 50 years later that the astronomer Christian Huygens discovered that the shapes were really rings.
Saturn Ring Plane Crossing, 1995	One obstacle to the recognition of Saturn's rings was that they are seen edge-on from Earth every 15 years, and thus seemed to disappear.
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