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Saturn is named after the Roman god of wealth and agriculture, who was the father of the god Jupiter.Its astronomical symbol has been traced back to the Greek Oxyrhynchus Papyri, where it can be seen to be a Greek kappa-rho ligature with a horizontal stroke, as an abbreviation for Κρονος (), the Greek name for the planet (). [35]
The timeline of discovery of Solar System planets and their natural satellites charts the progress of the discovery of new bodies over history. Each object is listed in chronological order of its discovery (multiple dates occur when the moments of imaging, observation, and publication differ), identified through its various designations (including temporary and permanent schemes), and the ...
Moons have come to exist around most planets and many other Solar System bodies. These natural satellites originated by one of three possible mechanisms: Co-formation from a circumplanetary disc (only in the cases of the giant planets); Formation from impact debris (given a large enough impact at a shallow angle); and; Capture of a passing object.
Saturn doesn't have any easily visible landmarks to track, and its gassy atmosphere doesn't offer many hints as to how fast it's actually rotating. On top of that, its magnetic field also hides ...
Hundreds of protoplanets may have existed in the early Solar System, ... Saturn has 146 confirmed satellites, ... Long-period comets have orbits lasting thousands of ...
Astronomers have detected more evidence that Saturn’s moon Enceladus may be one of the most promising places to search for life beyond Earth. Life may have everything it needs to exist on Saturn ...
Since then, increasingly distant planets have been reached, with probes landing on or impacting the surfaces of Venus in 1966 , Mars in 1971 (Mars 3, although a fully successful landing didn't occur until Viking 1 in 1976), the asteroid Eros in 2001 (NEAR Shoemaker), Saturn's moon Titan in 2004 , the comets Tempel 1 (Deep Impact) in 2005, and ...
Earth may have had a ring made up of a broken asteroid over 400 million years ago, a study finds. The Saturn-like feature could explain a climate shift at the time.