What are Some Prominent Features of Saturn?

Saturn (Saturn in English, Saturnus in Latin) is one of the eight planets in the solar system, and it is sixth in distance from near to far. It is second only to Jupiter in mass and diameter, and belongs to the same gas giant planet as Jupiter. Ancient Europe (Ancient Greece) Saturn is Kronos (Ancient Greek: ; English: Chronos), which was called the town star in ancient China.

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The surface of Saturn also has stripe strips that extend along the equator.

Saturn's halo consists of numerous small objects that orbit Saturn on Saturn's equatorial plane. Saturn is also the second largest planet in the solar system after Jupiter, and there are many large and small satellites around it, just like a small family. With the continuous improvement of observation technology in recent years

Saturn ground

Saturn is an exoplanet, and it is also suitable for observation at other times than two months before and after the conjunction (visually close to the sun). And the nature of the outer planet

Saturn

Saturn is the best time to observe Saturn, because when Saturn is sunburst, Saturn is the brightest (about 0th magnitude), and the apparent diameter (angular diameter) is also the largest and visible all around the sun.

Through a three-inch aperture (objective diameter) or more telescope, you can clearly see Saturn and Saturn's rings through it with an eyepiece magnification of more than 80 times. When the atmosphere is stable (more than 100 times magnification), you can also see Cassini ring gap . On February 11, 2007, Saturn was sunburst, with a brightness of -0.2, when Saturn was 20.27 "in Leo apparent diameter.

Speaking of the eight planets in the solar system, most people's minds may be the first planet to emerge. It is undeniable that Saturn is the only planet in the eight planets that has an obvious halo, which can be easily seen using ordinary astronomical telescopes. The halo of other planets is like a little witch seeing a big witch, which is less eye-catching than Saturn's halo.

Late April 2013 is the best time to observe Saturn, because Saturn is just around the sun. The phenomenon of rushing to the sun means that when we look at the solar system perpendicular to the orbital plane of the solar system, the sun, the earth and Saturn are aligned in a straight line. From the earth's perspective, Saturn is exactly opposite to the direction of the sun, and Saturn's brightness reaches the brightest year , Its viewing angle is also the largest in a year. In 2013, Saturn rushed into the sunset on April 28. When the sun goes west, Saturn will rise from the eastern horizon and be visible all night.

Although Saturn is only one day, you do nt have to wait until the sun is really observing. In a year, we basically ca nt observe Saturn for only about 3 months, but when it s easier to observe That is, one month before and after the charge, because Saturn is visible almost all night; in the next May to August, we can still see Saturn.

Readers who are familiar with the constellation, in 2013 Saturn appeared between Virgo and Libra. It is not far from the main star of Virgo, Spica, and it should not be difficult to find Saturn when you find the one. On April 26, 2013, Saturn is exactly between the moon and Suzuki. The moon is to the east of Saturn, and Suzuki is to the west, which is a good guide.

The most attractive part of Saturn is the beautiful halo, which is as dazzling as the halo on the angel's head. For readers with astronomical telescopes, no matter whether your telescope is large or small, its halo is still visible. If the weather is good, you might as well take out the telescope to observe Saturn. The angle of Saturn's ring in 2013 is personally appropriate, and the entire Saturn looks beautiful (just personal preference). In the next 4 years, the tilt angle of Saturn's rings will continue to increase. Until 2017, the angle of Saturn's ring opening will be the largest, and then the overall brightness of Saturn will also increase.

When we make long-term observation records of Saturn's rings, we will find that the appearance of Saturn's rings changes every year, from increasing to the largest, then to a straight line, and then expanding again ... When Saturn's rings shrink into a line When straight, Saturn's rings disappeared. From this, we can imagine how thin the rings of Saturn are.

It takes 29.5 years for Saturn to orbit the Sun. To gather the complete changes of Saturn's rings for a week, we need to make observations for 30 years. It only takes 7.5 years.

Saturn ancient

The existence of Saturn has been known in prehistoric times. In ancient times, it was the farthest of the five planets known except Earth, and has various myths consistent with its characteristics. In ancient Roman mythology it was the god of agriculture, and from the name adopted by this planet, it was the god of agriculture and harvest. The Romans considered him to be the Greek god Kronos, the Greeks believed that the outermost planet was the sacred Kronos, and the Romans followed this tradition.

In Indian astrology, there are 9 astrological objects, such as the famous Navagraha (Sanskrit: ). Saturn is one of them called "Sani" or "Shani". In China, everyone judges whether their actions are good or bad. Ancient Chinese and Japanese culture selected this planet as Saturn based on the Five Elements of China, and is one of the elements traditionally used for natural classification. In ancient Hebrew, Saturn was called "Shabbathai", and its angel was Cassiel, meaning the god of wisdom or good for the body and mind; it was Agiel, and the darker side was the demon ( lzaz). The Urdu and Malay language used in Ottoman Turkey, its name is "Zuhal", which is converted from Arabic

The ring of Saturn can be seen using a 1.5 cm telescope, but Galileo did not know its existence until 1610 when he looked at it with a telescope. Although he initially thought it was a satellite on both sides of Saturn, it was not until Christian Huygens used a higher multiple telescope to see it clearly and considered it a ring. Huygens also discovered Saturn's moon Titan. Soon after, Cassini discovered four other satellites: Enceladus, Enceladus, Enceladus, and Enceladus. In 1675, Cassini also discovered the famous Cassini seam.

There was no further meaningful discovery for a period of time, and it was not until 1789 that William Herschel discovered two more satellites: Enceladus and Enceladus. The irregularly shaped Titan and Titan have resonances and were discovered by the British in 1848.

In 1899, William Henry Pickering discovered Enceladus, an extremely irregular satellite, which did not rotate synchronously like a larger satellite. Phoebe was the first such satellite to be discovered. It orbited Saturn in a retrograde orbit with a period of more than one year. In the early 20th century, research on Titan confirmed in 1944 that he had a thick atmosphere-this was in Very unique characteristics of the satellites of the solar system,

Saturn Hyundai

Pioneer

In order to detect the physical condition of the outer space of the solar system, "Pioneer 11" went to heaven in April 1973, and flew to Saturn on September 1, 1979, becoming the first artificial celestial body to detect Saturn nearby.

Pioneer 11 discovered that Saturn has a broad ionosphere made of ionized hydrogen, with an upper temperature of about 977 ° C. Observations indicate that there are aurora in Saturn's polar region.

The "Pioneer 11" spacecraft was found at 1.28 million kilometers from Saturn in August and September 1979. The magnetic field of Saturn is very special. The magnetic field pattern is very similar to a big whale. Its head is round and blunt. Has a stout tail. The magnetic axis of Saturn's magnetic field coincides with its rotation axis, and the magnetic center is 22.5 kilometers away from the core of Saturn. The magnetic field range is thousands of times larger than the Earth's magnetic field range, but smaller than Jupiter's magnetic field, and it is not as complicated as Jupiter's magnetic field.

Voyager

After Voyager 1 and 2 visited Jupiter, they continued to travel to Saturn to investigate Saturn. After completing the mission to Saturn, Voyager 2 continued to fly to Uranus and Neptune to investigate them. These "multi-role" spaceships brought us new news about Saturn.

Scientists at the National Optical Observatory of the United States, while studying photos of Saturn sent by Voyager 2, discovered a strange phenomenon: a hexagonal cloud over Saturn's north pole. The cloud is centered at the North Pole and rotates at the speed of Saturn's rotation. The hexagonal cloud in Saturn's North Pole was not directly photographed by Voyager 2 because Voyager 2 did not directly fly over Saturn's North Pole. But as it orbited around Saturn's week, it took photos of Saturn from various angles. After the astronomers combined the photos, they could see the full picture of Saturn's North Pole, and they discovered the hexagonal cloud. The appearance of hexagonal clouds over Saturn's north pole prompted scientists to re-know Saturn. NASA speculates that its cause is related to Saturn's climate.

Cassini

Cassini is an integral part of Cassini-Huygens. Cassini-Huygens is a cooperative project of NASA, European Space Agency and Italian Space Agency. Its main task is to conduct space exploration of Saturn. The Cassini probe is named after the Italian-born French astronomer Cassini. Its mission is to orbit Saturn and conduct an in-depth investigation of Saturn and its atmosphere, rings, satellites and magnetic fields.

After 6 years, 8 months and 3.5 billion kilometers of long space travel, the Cassini space probe has successfully entered the orbit around Saturn on July 1, 2004 at 12:12 Beijing time , Began a 4-year scientific investigation of Saturn's atmosphere, rings and moons

In the four years orbiting Saturn, Cassini has a close-up overview of Saturn and a comprehensive survey of Saturn and its many moons.

"Cassini" has been taking comprehensive and complete photos and movies of the Saturn family since January 2004. The Cassini camera carries better performance than similar cameras on the Hubble Space Telescope.

Before approaching orbit, on June 11, 2004, it probed Titan and took extremely clear pictures of the satellite. Titan is the farthest satellite from Saturn, with a radius of 110 kilometers. Scientists speculate that it is an asteroid captured by Saturn. The Cassini measured its mass and density at a distance of 2,000 kilometers from it.

On February 17, 2005, the Cassini will pass by 1,179 kilometers from Enceladus, and on March 9, the same distance will be closer to 499 kilometers. The surface of Enceladus with a radius of 250 kilometers is very bright and can reflect almost 100% of sunlight. Scientists suspect that its surface is a smooth layer of ice, and Cassini will detect its magnetic field to determine whether there is salty water under its surface.

From April to September 2005, the orbit of "Cassini" will change from Saturn's equatorial plane to an angle of 22 degrees with this plane. It will measure Saturn's rings and the atmosphere at a high level, and further detect the structure of the rings and the materials that make up the rings Particles and the physical properties of Saturn's atmosphere.

From September to November 2005, Cassini will approach Titan, Titan, Titan, and Titan individually, and observe them separately. Titan has a radius of 560 kilometers and Titan has a radius of 870 kilometers. They look like our moon and are densely packed with craters. Titan is located between Titan and Titan in an irregular shape with a longest diameter of 175 kilometers, much like an asteroid. Titan has a radius of 530 kilometers. It has the same density as water and is likely to be an ice hockey ball.

From July 2006 to July 2007, Cassini will systematically monitor and take images of Saturn, the rings of Saturn, and the magnetosphere of Saturn. From July to September 2007, it will again film Saturn and his family, and will observe Titan on September 10, about 1,000 kilometers away from Titan. Titan has a radius of 720 kilometers. Its surface is very dark on one side, but close to white on the other, which is strange.

From October 2007 to July 2008, "Cassini" will gradually increase the angle between the orbit and Saturn's equatorial plane, and finally reach 75.6 degrees so that "Cassini" can better observe Saturn's Halo, measuring magnetic fields and particles far from Saturn's equatorial plane, monitoring Saturn's polar regions, and observing Saturn's aurora phenomena. Meanwhile, on December 3, 2007 and March 12, 2008, it will approach Titan Eleven twice, observing the satellite at 6,190 km and 995 km from Titan Eleven, respectively.

On September 15, 2017, the Cassini probe, which has been working in space for 20 years, crashed in the atmosphere of Saturn under controlled conditions.

After sending probes to Mars in 2040, NASA plans to send submarines to the Saturn satellite. NASA plans to use a winged spacecraft. After successfully entering the satellite atmosphere at a supersonic speed, the submarine was released and dropped to the bottom of the ocean.

Saturn's bipolar phenomenon

Saturn revolves around the sun for 30 years, and Saturn's bipolar phenomenon occurs only twice in one revolution. This image taken by the Hubble Telescope shows the simultaneous appearance of shining aurora in each of Saturn's polar regions. This phenomenon is due to the formation of the "solar wind", which is a stream of subatomic charged particles ejected from the sun and interacts with molecules in Saturn's atmosphere.

On Earth, aurora is a strange phenomenon formed by charged particles entering the atmosphere along the Earth's magnetic field lines. Astronomers found a slight difference between Saturn's North Pole and South Pole Aurora in this image, where the bright ellipse-shaped area contained in the Aurora Borealis is slightly smaller than the South Pole Aurora and the light

Bipolar aurora phenomenon of Saturn photographed by Hubble Space Telescope

Stronger. This implies that Saturn's magnetic field distribution is not uniform. Because the North Pole magnetic field is stronger, when solar particles pass through the Arctic atmosphere, they are accelerated to form a higher energy particle flow.

Dr. Jonathan Nichols, of the University of Leicester, UK, who is a member of the Hubble research team, said: "The Hubble Telescope has proven to be one of the most important space science tools for mankind. The first Hubble observation project led by a British research team and observed aurora on another planet. "

It is reported that Hubble Telescope has not taken such a spectacular image before, Dr. Nichols said: "This picture is very interesting to us and it has a unique effect on aerospace science research. The special advantage is due to the Hubble telescope's proximity to Saturn's equatorial plane. "

Nichols said that because of Saturn's longer orbit, the Hubble telescope will no longer observe such images during its service. It is of great scientific significance that the aurora phenomenon occurs in both the South Pole and the North Pole.

Righteousness. Through this research, we will further understand the magnetic characteristics of Saturn and the process of generating aurora, which is different from that of Earth.

University of Leicester scientists unveiled Saturn's northern lights from a Hubble UV survey camera, taken between April and May 2013

After further research, scientists found that the principle of Saturn's aurora formation is similar to that of the Earth, and that all matter carried by the solar wind passes through the electronic layer of the atmosphere. In response, Jonathan Nichols, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Leicester, said that the aurora, which appears and disappears from time to time on Saturn, is like a gorgeous light show. It is worth mentioning that the Cassini detector in the United States also captured similar aurora events from different angles.

Storm Mystery

Astronomers have long been puzzled by the mysterious six-sided storm in Saturn's North Pole. Pictures taken with infrared wavelengths show red, orange and green pseudotones. NASA's Cassini spacecraft photographed the true, stunning colors of the Arctic hexagonal storm, which has orbited Saturn for more than 9 years.

This hexagonal storm is about 25,000 kilometers wide-large enough to hold 4 Earths. The color composite picture in the picture was created using the original picture taken by the Cassini spacecraft from a distance of 610,373 kilometers. It shows the strange geometry of the hexagons and the amazing changes in Saturn's northern hemisphere shadow.

This hexagon was created by Saturn's upper atmospheric wind. The polar vortex can be seen in the center of the shape. The hexagon was first observed by Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 more than 30 years ago, and scientists believe it was created by adapting to the rotation of Saturn. The Cassini spacecraft provided scientists with a close-up view of the first visible light of a giant storm spinning in a hexagon.

The thin, bright clouds on the outer edge of the storm traveled at about 150 meters per second. "We realized when we saw this vortex because it looked very similar to a hurricane on Earth," said Andrew Ingersoll, a member of the Cassini imaging research team and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. Andrew Ingersoll). "But it's on Saturn and it's more extensive, and in addition it depends to some extent on the small amount of water vapor in Saturn's hydrogen atmosphere."

Scientists are currently studying this hurricane to gain new insights into hurricanes on Earth, which rely on warm water. Although there are no water bodies near the clouds above Saturn's atmosphere, understanding how these Saturn storms use water vapor will provide scientists with more information about how Earth's hurricanes were generated and maintained.

Hurricanes on Earth and the vortex of Saturn's North Pole have a cloudless or less clouded central eye. Other similar features include high-level clouds forming a wind eye wall, other high-level clouds rotating around the wind eye, and rotating counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere. A major difference between the two hurricanes is that hurricanes on Saturn are larger than on Earth and rotate at an alarmingly fast rate. On Saturn, the wind on the Wall of Wind Eyes blows 4 times faster than the hurricane on Earth.

Impact of Saturn on Earth

According to foreign media reports, the earth is 588 million kilometers from Jupiter and 1.3 billion kilometers from Saturn. However, these "big buddies" in the solar system will have a greater impact on the earth, and will not even conceive life. Their orbit keeps the earth in an elliptical orbit and maintains a proper distance from the sun, which is suitable for the reproduction of life.

If Saturn's orbit moves 10% toward the Sun, the traction will cause the Earth's orbit to extend tens of millions of kilometers. The results of the study were led by Elke Pilat-Lohinger, a scientist at the University of Vienna, Austria, who designed a computer model to understand how Jupiter and Saturn affect the appearance of other planetary orbits.

This simple computer model does not include other planets in the inner solar system, and Professor Lohg found that the greater the tilt of Saturn's orbit, the more the orbit of the earth will be extended. The study was published in the recently published Journal of New Scientist.

Jupiter's gravity is 2.5 times stronger than Earth's, and it can pull other planets in the solar system. When Mars and Venus were added to this computer model, the orbits of all three planets stabilized, but Saturn's orbital tilt still had a large impact on Earth.

This computer model shows that a 20-degree tilt of Saturn's orbit will make Earth's orbit closer to the sun than Venus' orbit, and at the same time, it will cause Mars to leave the solar system completely.

Earlier this year, the University of New South Wales in Australia and Royal Holloway University in the United Kingdom completed a similar study to perform various computer simulation tests on the solar system.

Based on repeated testing of each data, when Jupiter is in different orbits, from circular to elliptical orbits, the planetary orbits in the solar system have not changed. At the same time, scientists moved the entire Jupiter orbit inward and outward to test what would happen, whether the planet was closer to the sun or farther away from the sun.

Each simulation is based on a time frame of 1 million years, recording the impact of the Earth every 100 years based on changes in Jupiter's orbital position. "This simulation is very important," said Jodi Horner, an astronomer and astrobiologist at the University of South Queensland in Australia. "Although Jupiter's orbital position causes small changes in Earth's orbit and inclination, it has an impact on the Earth's climate. Still unclear. " ^[5]

Saturn also has gorgeous northern lights (6 photos)

Saturn samsung front line

According to the Guangdong Astronomical Society, a rare Samsung front-line astronomical phenomenon will occur on August 24, 2016. The beautiful Saturn, the outer planet Mars closest to Earth, and the brightest star in Scorpio, "Sinjuku II", are connected in a straight line, and Mars will converge with Sinjuku. The two are only 1.8 degrees apart, that is, less than 4 full moon Line up so far. At that time, the two reddest celestial bodies in the sky will come together and be very noticeable.

This rare phenomenon on the front line of Samsung only happened once in 30 years, and the last time it appeared on February 17, 1986. If the sky is clear, it can be seen all over China and even the seven continents of the world. The southern hemisphere is more ideal than the northern hemisphere. Each place can be put into observation 40 minutes after sunset, and can be continuously observed for more than 120 minutes. Observation is in the night sky slightly west of the south. ^[1]