Pippa Corbett answered
Saturn is the second-biggest planet in our solar system, and only Jupiter exceeds Saturn in terms of planetary size.
The term 'gas-giant' is commonly applied to Saturn because of its size and its gaseous atmosphere.
There are many different ways to measure a planet's size, so here's a quick summary of Saturn's figures.
How big is Saturn?
How long is a day on Saturn? What about a year?
A day on earth takes roughly 24 hours to pass, but waiting for tomorrow to come on Saturn doesn't take even half that time. The planet rotates on its axis once every 10 hours and 47 minutes.
A year, (which is how long a planet takes to orbit the sun), is much longer. A year on Saturn is 10,832 Earth days. That's nearly 29.7 Earth years!
The term 'gas-giant' is commonly applied to Saturn because of its size and its gaseous atmosphere.
There are many different ways to measure a planet's size, so here's a quick summary of Saturn's figures.
How big is Saturn?
- In terms of mass, Saturn is 568.3E24 kg (around 95 times the mass of Earth).
- The diameter of Saturn is 120,536 km along its equator - this is more than 9 times the length of the Earth's equator. Saturn also measures in at 108,728 km from pole to pole.
- The surface area of Saturn works out at 4.27 x 1010 (that's nearly 90 times more than Earth's).
How long is a day on Saturn? What about a year?
A day on earth takes roughly 24 hours to pass, but waiting for tomorrow to come on Saturn doesn't take even half that time. The planet rotates on its axis once every 10 hours and 47 minutes.
A year, (which is how long a planet takes to orbit the sun), is much longer. A year on Saturn is 10,832 Earth days. That's nearly 29.7 Earth years!
