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"Dara!" called Brenn. "Come look at Saturn. It's beautiful!"
Dara gazed out the window at the planet and its rings. "Wow," she said.
A voice boomed through the instrument panel. "Saturn is the second of the Outer Planets. Sometimes called Gas Giants, these planets are largely gas and liquid. They have ring systems and many moons."
Brenn and Dara grinned at each other as SAM continued. "With a diameter of 74,900 mi (120,500 km), Saturn is nearly as big as Jupiter. Jupiter is about 11 times as wide as the Earth, while Saturn is more than nine times as wide.
"A Saturn day (one rotation on its axis) is less than 11 hours. A Saturn year (one revolution around the Sun) equals about 29.5 Earth years. The planet is 885,000,000 mi (1,424,000,000 km) from the Sun. A person weighing 100 pounds on Earth will weigh 116 pounds on Saturn. Saturn has at least 18 moons.
"The rings are made up of billions of pieces of ice and rock orbiting the planet. Some are very tiny, but others are ten feet wide.
"Strong winds in the atmosphere sometimes blow as fast as 1,000 mph (1,600 km/hr). Storms rage on Saturn. It is very cold in the cloud cover, with temperatures of -300LºF (-185 ?8&oC). Further inside the planet, it is much hotter.
"Like Jupiter, Saturn is mostly hydrogen. It probably has a rocky core, surrounded by a layer of liquid metallic (molten) hydrogen, and then a layer of liquid hydrogen. Above that, the atmosphere is mostly gaseous hydrogen and helium. There is no solid surface for a landing."
After SAM fell silent, Brenn said, "I wonder if we could explore Saturn the same way we explored Jupiter. Let's think about the two planets and see how they are alike and unlike."
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QUESTIONS
Use the word groups to the right to label the cross section diagram of Saturn below.
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rocky core layer of liquid metallic (molten) hydrogen layer of liquid hydrogen hydrogen and helium gas |
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Writing Assignment: Help Brenn and Dara think of all the ways Jupiter and Saturn are alike and unlike. On the back of this sheet, write two paragraphs. In one, explain how the planets are alike. In the other, explain how they are different.