How many aus is saturn from the sun

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Share Twit Share Email. April 22, Credit: NASA. Explore further. Provided by Universe Today. Citation : How far are the planets from the Sun? This document is subject to copyright. What keeps the solar system in balance?

Does our solar system have a name? Why is the solar system flat? What is the theory that explains how the solar system was formed? See all questions in Components of the Solar System. Impact of this question views around the world.

You can reuse this answer Creative Commons License. Its axis is tilted by This means that, like Earth, Saturn experiences seasons. Saturn is home to a vast array of intriguing and unique worlds.

From the haze-shrouded surface of Titan to crater-riddled Phoebe, each of Saturn's moons tells another piece of the story surrounding the Saturn system. Currently, Saturn has 53 confirmed moons with 29 additional provisional moons awaiting confirmation. Saturn's rings are thought to be pieces of comets, asteroids, or shattered moons that broke up before they reached the planet, torn apart by Saturn's powerful gravity.

They are made of billions of small chunks of ice and rock coated with other materials such as dust. The ring particles mostly range from tiny, dust-sized icy grains to chunks as big as a house. A few particles are as large as mountains. The rings would look mostly white if you looked at them from the cloud tops of Saturn, and interestingly, each ring orbits at a different speed around the planet.

Saturn's ring system extends up to , miles , kilometers from the planet, yet the vertical height is typically about 30 feet 10 meters in the main rings. Named alphabetically in the order they were discovered, the rings are relatively close to each other, with the exception of a gap measuring 2, miles 4, kilometers in width called the Cassini Division that separates Rings A and B.

The main rings are A, B, and C. Rings D, E, F, and G are fainter and more recently discovered. Much farther out, there is the very faint Phoebe ring in the orbit of Saturn's moon Phoebe. Saturn took shape when the rest of the solar system formed about 4. About 4 billion years ago, Saturn settled into its current position in the outer solar system, where it is the sixth planet from the Sun.

Like Jupiter, Saturn is mostly made of hydrogen and helium, the same two main components that make up the Sun. Like Jupiter, Saturn is made mostly of hydrogen and helium. At Saturn's center is a dense core of metals like iron and nickel surrounded by rocky material and other compounds solidified by intense pressure and heat. It is enveloped by liquid metallic hydrogen inside a layer of liquid hydrogen —similar to Jupiter's core but considerably smaller.

It's hard to imagine, but Saturn is the only planet in our solar system with an average density that is less than water. The giant gas planet could float in a bathtub if such a colossal thing existed.

The planet is mostly swirling gases and liquids deeper down. The extreme pressures and temperatures deep inside the planet would crush, melt, and vaporize any spacecraft trying to fly into the planet.

Saturn is blanketed with clouds that appear as faint stripes, jet streams, and storms. The planet is many different shades of yellow, brown, and gray. Winds in the upper atmosphere reach 1, feet per second meters per second in the equatorial region. In contrast, the strongest hurricane-force winds on Earth top out at about feet per second meters per second.

And the pressure — the same kind you feel when you dive deep underwater — is so powerful it squeezes gas into a liquid.