Planet Saturn is a very interesting object to observe, may be because of its awesome disks. Right now in February, Saturn can be seen in northern hemisphere, just like it was seen also in January. Planet Saturn starts climbing from between East and North-East direction. Saturn comes visible at about 6:30 pm. here in Helsinki in Finland. Having the bright star Regulus as its buddy, Saturn continues climbing higher. At 7:30 pm. it is already dark and at that time Saturn can be seen close to South. Directly in South the planet is at 8 pm.

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun in our solar system. The diameter of Saturn is 120.000 kilometers, which is 9.5 times the diameter of the Earth. Saturn’s mass is 95 times bigger than the mass of the Earth and the temperature of the planet is -180 celcius degrees measured above the clouds. While the Earth has only one moon, Saturn has 18 moons orbiting. Saturn is definitely a huge planet providing lots of interesting things for us to observe.

Saturn is not a planet like Earth. Instead of solid ground, Saturn is made of gas. It is a giant gas planet to which landing is not possible. The surface of Saturn is made of clouds of different colors. If you would try landing on Saturn, you would fly through the planet. The pressure of the gas layer is two million times the pressure on Earth on sea level, and the temperature of Saturn is 8.000 celcius degrees. In the middle of Saturn is a “heart of stone” which has temperature of 15.000 celcius degrees.

Saturn is really an awesome planet. According to scientists, Saturn has global storms every 30 years. It is the wildest known storm in the solar system. Wind speed of the storm can reach speed of 500 meters per second. Saturn, which was formed about 4.5 billion years ago, is known from its spectacular disks. With a telescope the disks can easily be seen from Earth. The reason why they can be seen well is that the disks are made of numerous ice cubes that reflect light well. Smallest particles of the disks are dust, while the biggest particles are probably ice cubes with a maximum diameter of few meters. What is incredible, this disk system is only 30 meters thick.

There is one interesting detail in Saturn. The disks of Saturn seem to “disappear” in every 15 years. This is happens when Saturn is in such position that observers located on Earth watch the disks directly from the side. Because of this the disks cannot be seen. This happened last time in 1995 and the next time it will happen is in 2009.

Images on left side show how Saturn climbs on night sky when observed from Helsinki in February 2008.