History UsefulNotes / Saturn

The surface gravity on Saturn is 1.07 g, which is only 7% stronger than Earth despite being more massive. The reason for this disparity has to do with the planet's very low density. If you could stand on Saturn, it would only be about the equivalent of carrying around a moderately heavy backpack on Earth.

It is very likely that the four terrestrial planets, and by extension humanity, have Saturn to thank for their continued existence. Current theories on solar system formation state that it is typical for large gas giants to migrate inward until they orbit extremely close to their stars, often close enough that a full revolution takes only weeks, or even days. Jupiter most likely would have done the same, destroying everything in its path via gravitational forces, if Saturn had not formed with sufficient mass and in the right position to yank Jupiter back, allowing the inner planets to continue forming. This migration also not only pushed Uranus and Neptune to their current positions, but had them ''swap'' positions (Neptune had originally been closer to the Sun than Uranus).

* ''Franchise/WonderWoman'' [[ComicBook/MartianManhunter Vol 1]]: Diana, ComicBook/SteveTrevor and the Holliday Girls end up abducted and enslaved by telepathic Saturnian slavers. They then lead a SlaveRevolt and in subsequent interactions ensure the abolishment of slavery in the Empire of Saturn and secure an alliance between the Empire and the USA. The Saturnians seem to live on a moon and spend a lot of time in the rings rather than live or work on the surface of the planet they're named for.

* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1942'': Diana, ComicBook/SteveTrevor and the Holliday Girls end up abducted and enslaved by telepathic Saturnian slavers. They then lead a SlaveRevolt and in subsequent interactions ensure the abolishment of slavery in the Empire of Saturn and secure an alliance between the Empire and the USA. The Saturnians seem to live on a moon and spend a lot of time in the rings rather than live or work on the surface of the planet they're named for.

The planet sometimes known as [[ShoutOut the Lord of the Rings]]. It is the furthest out of the five planets known to Earth observers from antiquity[[note]]although Uranus is barely visible with the naked eye under ideal conditions[[/note]], although its famous rings were not known until telescopic observation by UsefulNotes/GalileoGalilei discovered them in 1610.

The planet sometimes known as [[ShoutOut the Lord of the Rings]].

* ''VideoGame/{{Observation}}'' starts with a multinational space station mysteriously transporting from Earth's orbit to above polar hexagon, and the player has to find out why. Throughout the game hexagons appear everywhere. Long story short [[spoiler: Saturn is some sort of multidimensional nexus]].

* In ''[[Film/FantasticFour2005 Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer]]'', Saturn is a SacrificialPlanet whose rings are destroyed by [[ComicBook/{{Galactus}} Gah Lak Tus]] on its way to devour Earth.

* ''ComicBook/{{The Legion of Super-Heroes}}'': Saturn Girl and her people are a race of telepaths native to Saturn's moon Titan.

* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1942'': Diana, ComicBook/SteveTrevor and the Holliday Girls end up abducted and enslaved by Saturnian slavers. They then lead a SlaveRevolt and in subsequent interactions ensure the abolishment of slavery in the Empire of Saturn and secure an alliance between the Empire and the USA. The Saturnians seem to live on a moon and spend a lot of time in the rings rather than live or work on the surface of the planet they're named for.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/saturn_during_equinox.jpg]]

* Density: 0.687 g/cm3

The rings of Saturn are composed of large numbers of ice and rock fragments, possibly formed from a collision of a moon that than never came back together, or possibly formed from material that was too close to Saturn to form a moon in the first place. These clumps often combine and then split, maintaining and redistributing material throughout the rings. Normally, when particles clump together, their tiny gravity is enough to make them keep accreting more and more material — this is how the planets formed in the first place. But the rings are so close to Saturn that the big planet's own gravity prevents this from happening. This magical distance from a large object, within which no gravitationally-held-together satellites can exist, is called the Roche limit.

UsefulNotes/TheMoonsOfSaturn are mostly crater-covered ice and rock balls, but the largest, Titan, has a thick atmosphere (about 1.5x the pressure of Earth's), and has a number of hydrocarbon lakes, erosion channels, rivers, and other surface features. Titan may also have ice volcanoes, or other geologic processes. Another moon, Enceladus, has the previously mentioned water geysers, and possibly an underground liquid water layer. The moons of Saturn also help maintain some of the rings, by providing material through collisions, and gravitationally interacting with the rings to keep them stable.

* The protagonist ''Literature/TheDivineComedy'' briefly stops by Saturn on his travels to leave the universe and commune with God. Unlike the other planets, none of the extra-dimensional spirits visiting the planet sing or smile because [[BrownNote the expression of their divine happiness be intense enough to disintegrate our hero]].

Saturn's magnetic field is the second largest in the Solar System, and is probably generated by metallic hydrogen in the core of the planet. The plasma within the field primarily comes from the moon Enceladus, which shoots water through geysers in the south pole that is then ionized, while some other material comes from Titan, and a bit from other moons. Energy comes from both the solar wind and from Saturn's rotation, somewhat of a mixture of Jupiter's magnetosphere (where rotation supplies most of the energy), and other planetary magnetospheres (where the solar wind supplies almost all the energy). As with other Solar System bodies with magnetic fields, Saturn has its own aurorae.

Scientists still debate the age of the rings, which may be relatively recent (in Solar System terms), or may be almost as old as the Solar System. The latest research suggests the former and that they may be a short-lived (in astronomical terms again) feature of Saturn, that will disappear from the inside to the outside [https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/goddard/2018/ring-rain within the next hundred million years]

Scientists still debate the age of the rings, which may be relatively recent (in Solar System terms), or may be almost as old as the Solar System.

[[quoteright:284:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Saturn_Voyager_1081.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:284:As seen by Voyager 1 on the way past]]

UsefulNotes/TheMoonsOfSaturn are mostly crater covered ice and rock balls, but the largest, Titan, has a thick atmosphere (about 1.5x the pressure of Earth's), and has a number of hydrocarbon lakes, erosion channels, rivers, and other surface features. Titan may also have ice volcanoes, or other geologic processes. Another moon, Enceladus, has the previously mentioned water geysers, and possibly an underground liquid water layer. The moons of Saturn also help maintain some of the rings, by providing material through collisions, and gravitationally interacting with the rings to keep them stable.

* In ''Webcomic/{{Nebula}}'', the solar system is shown as a group of {{Anthropomorphic Personification}}s, with Saturn being a quiet recluse (with some ExtremeDoormat tendencies) that Uranus and their other neighbors run roughshod over.

!!Saturn in Music

Saturn is the 6th planet in the solar system, the second most massive (about 95 Earth masses), and the second highest volume, though it's also the least dense (on average, it is less dense than liquid water). It is made mainly of hydrogen and helium gas, with a possibly rocky core in the center, and additional trace elements. Saturn's atmosphere, though looking bland in most far-away pictures, has intense cyclones and storms, and the second fastest winds in the solar system on average (After Neptune). Thanks to its 10.6 hour rotation, the planet bulges from centrifugal force, making it appear a little squashed.

Saturn's orbit isn't perfectly circular; at perihelion, it's barely 9 A.U.[[note]]A.U. stands for Astronomical Unit, the average distance between the Earth and the sun[[/note]] from the sun, but then it swings out until it's over 10 A.U. away from the sun at aphelion. One complete orbit takes a hair under 29-and-a-half years.

Saturn's magnetic field is the second largest in the solar system, and is probably generated by metallic hydrogen in the core of the planet. The plasma within the field primarily comes from the moon Enceladus, which shoots water through geysers in the south pole that is then ionized, while some other material comes from Titan, and a bit from other moons. Energy comes from both the Solar Wind and from Saturn's rotation, somewhat of a mixture of Jupiter's magnetosphere (where rotation supplies most of the energy), and other planetary magnetospheres (where the solar wind supplies almost all the energy). As with other solar system bodies with magnetic fields, Saturn has its own Auroras.

Like Jupiter and Neptune, Saturn has its own iconic storm in the Great White Spot, a massive storm that appears approximately every thirty years and lasts for about one Earth year as Saturn approaches its summer solstice. Changes in the density of Saturn's cloud layers as its northern hemisphere receives extra heat from the Sun kicks up an enormous storm that can have varying width. Sometimes the Great White Spot is an oval, similar to Jupiter's Great Red Spot, and other times the Great White Spot can stretch out until it leaves a trail. In one instance, the Great White Spot's trail crossed almost the entire planet. Another iconic storm is Saturn's Hexagon, which is unique in the Solar System for two reasons: it lies on Saturn's north pole (while no other gas giant has a polar vortex), and its outermost layers are shaped like a perfect hexagon.[[note]]Apparently, the polygonal shape is a consequence of the centre and periphery of the storm rotating at different speeds, along with some interacting jetstreams underneath.[[/note]]

The rings of Saturn are composed of large numbers of ice and rock fragments, possibly formed from a collision of a moon that than never came back together, or possibly formed from material that was too close to Saturn to form a moon in the first place. These clumps often combine and then split, maintaining and redistributing material throughout the rings. Normally, when particles clump together, their tiny gravity is enough to make them keep accreting more and more material — this is how the planets formed in the first place. But the rings are so close to Saturn that the big planet's own gravity prevents this from happening. This magical distance from a large object, within which no gravitationally-held-together satellites can exist, is called the Roche Limit.

Scientists still debate the age of the rings, which may be relatively recent (in solar system terms), or may be almost as old as the solar system.

* In the novel (not movie) version of ''[[Literature/TheSpaceOdysseySeries 2001: A Space Odyssey]]'', the monolith on the moon aims an intense radio beam at Saturn. The spacecraft ''Discovery'' was initially built to explore Jupiter, but due to this radio signal, the mission is re-routed to Saturn at the last minute.
* Grant D. Callin's ''Saturnalia'' focuses on Saturn and its moons, as a sort of cosmic ''Literature/TreasureIsland'' with colonist and Earthers hunting down alien artifacts.

* Music/NoDoubt's 2000 album "Return of Saturn" was named that because around that time the band members were all around 29 years old - one orbit of Saturn.

Saturn is 6th planet in the solar system, the second most massive (about 95 earth masses), and the second highest volume, though it's also the least dense (on average, it is less dense than liquid water). It is made mainly of hydrogen and helium gas, with a possibly rocky core in the center, and additional trace elements. Saturn's atmosphere, though looking bland in most far away pictures, has intense cyclones and storms, and the second fastest winds in the solar system on average (After Neptune). Thanks to its 10.6 hour rotation, the planet bulges from centrifugal force, making it appear a little squashed.

Like Jupiter and Neptune, Saturn has its own iconic storm in the Great White Spot, a massive storm that appears approximately every thirty years and lasts for about one Earth year as Saturn approaches its summer solstice. Changes in the density of Saturn's cloud layers as its northern hemisphere receives extra heat from the Sun kicks up an enormous storm that can have varying width. Sometimes the Great White Spot is an oval, similar to Jupiter's Great Red Spot, and other times the Great White Spot can stretch out until it leaves a trail. In one instance, the Great White Spot's trail crossed almost the entire planet.
Another iconic storm is Saturn's Hexagon, which is unique in the Solar System for two reasons: it lies on Saturn's north pole (while no other gas giant has a polar vortex), and its outermost layers are shaped like a perfect hexagon.[[note]]Apparently, the polygonal shape is a consequence of the centre and periphery of the storm rotating at different speeds, along with some interacting jetstreams underneath.[[/note]]

It is very likely that the four terrestrial planets, and by extension humanity, have Saturn to thank for their continued existence. Current theories on solar system formation state that it is typical for large gas giants to migrate inward until they orbit extremely close to their stars, often close enough that a full revolution takes only weeks, or even days. Jupiter most likely would have done the same, destroying everything in its path via gravitational forces, if Saturn had not formed with sufficient mass and in the right position to yank Jupiter back, allowing the inner planets to continue forming. This migration also not only pushed Uranus and Neptune to their current positions, but had them ''swap'' positions (Neptune had originally been closer to the Sun than Uranus.)

UsefulNotes/TheMoonsOfSaturn are mostly crater covered ice and rock balls, but the largest, Titan, has a thick atmosphere (about 1.5x the pressure of Earth's), and has a number of hydrocarbon lakes, erosion channels, rivers, and other surface features. Titan may also have ice volcanoes, or other geologic processes. Another moon, Enceladus, has the previously mentioned water geysers, and possibly an underground liquid water layer. The moons of Saturn also help maintain some of the Rings, by providing material through collisions, and gravitationally interacting with the rings to keep them stable.

!! The Rings

The rings of Saturn are composed of large numbers of ice and rock fragments, possibly formed from a collision of a moon that than never came back together, or possibly formed from material that was too close to Saturn to form a moon in the first place. These clumps often combine and then split, maintaining and redistributing material throughout the rings. Normally, when particles clump together, their tiny gravity is enough to make them keep accreting more and more material -- this is how the planets formed in the first place. But the rings are so close to Saturn that the big planet's own gravity prevents this from happening. This magical distance from a large object, within which no gravitationally-held-together satellites can exist, is called the Roche Limit.

!! Saturn in fiction

!! Saturn in Music

* Mike Banks' techno album ''X-102 Rediscovers the Rings of Saturn'' has many of its songs named after Saturnian moons of features of it as rings.

* Deathcore band ''Rings of Saturn'' named themselves and modeled their logo after the planet due to all of their songs being themed around space and extraterrestrials.

* ''Saturns Pattern'' is the title of an album and song by Paul Weller and references the Hexagon.

* The ''Atlas: Space'' albums of Sleeping At Last feature music themed around all the planets; "Saturn" is the most popular of them, with the message of it being that despite everything, TheWorldIsJustAwesome.