Every idea is an incitement. It offers itself for belief, and if believed, it is acted upon unless some other belief outweighs it, or some failure of energy stifles the movement at its birth

— Oliver Wendell Holmes (American jurist)

SATURN the magnificent, the mighty, the spectacular, the speechless giant, bedecked with jewels in its flanks, living with gay abandon along side a mighty neighbour. The Casanova of the solar system, fond of collecting moons, the sedate gentleman of the vault, the exquisite bride of the galaxy, the queen of the skies, bright as towering street lights of the fabled Never-Never Land, now appearing as a lovely woman’s face and now as a masculine, broad-shouldered giant, with his notorious and ungainly grin, and grip, for fallible men through history.

The gentle but, at the same time, voracious giant blissfully sweeps beyond the blue-green sky in its appointed track, hiding itself from Earthlings through the day, as if saving itself from an evil eye, appearing only in the safety of night, revealing itself in its cold and lonesome but shifting embrace, compelling it to play safe and complete one journey around the mighty Sun in 29.5 years, more than a third of the ripe old age accorded to us humans.

No story about the Solar System, or the galaxy is complete without a thorough discussion about nature’s prominent beacon, the fabulous planet Saturn, the sixth planet out from the Sun. Firstly, its steady brightness; secondly, its lovely ring system; thirdly, the massive hydrogen atmosphere; fourthly, its placement in the Solar System, which, for our ancestors was the last frontier for the team planets (in fact, the world had to wait until 1781 when the frontier ‘expanded’ per force with discovery through improved telescopes as well as mathematics, partly by German-born English astronomer, William Herschel (1738-1822).

Fifth and surely not the last, the retinue of 63 moons and moonlets, mostly lying hidden inside the rings. As you are surely aware, the sixth planet is also the second largest in the Solar system. It stands at 120,536km across, which is about 19 times more than the Earth. Saturn’s tremendous magnetic field is 1,000 times stronger than the Earth. Awesome winds blow on its surface, no less than 1,800 km/hour (faster than on Jupiter but slower than on Neptune).

For those who maintain that Jupiter is not planet but a brown dwarf, have done a favour to Saturn: it is the largest of all planets. The Roman god of agriculture (Saturnus) has crust not very different from that of the Earth. But deep down, in its core hydrogen gas undergoes a transition into metallic form, owing to ominous pressures at work absolutely relentlessly, and gradually increasing heat (remember Jupiter? ).

As you know, for the gullible ancestors of ours, Saturn very appropriately has a sickle for a symbol. For thousands of years, in thousands of epochs the planet has been revered like little else. Although 95 times more massive than the Earth, planet Saturn is only 16 per cent of the density of the lesser cousin. Again a word about its core. It is composed of iron, nickel and rock (silicon and oxygen compounds), surrounded by a deep layer of metallic hydrogen and liquid helium, again, surrounded by an outer layer of gas.

Saturn is a mighty windy planet. Winds can reach the velocity of 1,800km per hour. Often more. These winds can be far faster than on Jupiter but way short of those on Neptune where they blow like crazy. Planet Earth has known nothing like it for the last three billion years. Maybe somewhat similar in earlier epochs when the only traces of life were confined to the seas where flora flourished but fauna (animal life) was still far into the future.

Now the ring system, or the ‘ears’ of Saturn(some believed that they were celestial handles). Long believed as the final outpost of the Solar System, planet Saturn revealed its rings only when more advanced telescopes took the place of earlier models. This put to rest the earlier notions regarding Saturn and, more importantly, many such beliefs pertaining not only to astronomy but other sciences which were subjected to similar scrutiny concurrently.

The one person who studied the ring system and made a precise assessment about them earlier than anyone else is the Italian-French astronomer, Giovanni Domenico Cassini (1625-1712). Cassini might well have been a contemporary of the old man of science, Galileo, but for the fact that when Galileo died in 1642, Cassini was a teenager still struggling to find a vocation. But surprisingly, the one fella who performed a pioneer’s task in this regard was the Dutch astronomer, Christian Huygens (1629-1695) who opened the path for others to follow. It was Cassini, on the other hand who discovered that Saturn had not one but two rings separated from each other. One inside the other. Therefore, they are named after him as Cassini’s Division. More rings were discovered by other luminaries of astronomy in the following years. Ring system carries nine main rings and three discontinued arcs, rather incomplete rings. They are composed of ice particles and rocky debris, an interesting mixture of sorts. All of the rings are separate from each other, i.e. there are gaps between them and they do not collide with each other for the reason that the distance between them is too much for any naughty activity to take place.

Of all the Saturn moons, Titan is the largest. In fact, Titan is the king among moons. Much larger than our own moon (1.67 times) it has a diameter of 5,800 km (our moon is 3476km). In the case of volume, it excels them all. If the moon is regarded as 1, Titan’ s is 4.65.

The next largest in the Solar System is Jupiter’s moon named, Ganymede (its mass is much more than Titan’s). Titan has an atmosphere, somewhat like us. The orbital speed of Titan is a leisurely 9.69km per second. But because Saturn has a lot more to travel, it completes its orbit in 29.5 years. Also, the time it takes to go around on its axis (day) is a rapid 10 hours 34 minutes. It also implies that the rapid movement results in a mighty centrifugal force so that the planet is oblate i.e. flattened at poles, like Jupiter.

The Earth is also flattened at the poles though it is a solid and not a gaseous planet. But as you know that once upon a time (some four billion years ago) it was fluid and so it developed a bulge around the equator, making the equatorial area slightly larger than the poles. This is true for all planets and their moons, though to a varying degree. Interesting, isn’t it? Some of Saturnian moons have very interesting names. Just consider: Enceladus, Dione, Tethys, Rhea, Iapetus and so on.