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Encyclopedia > Saturn I

SATURN



 

Image from the Hubble Space Telescope

Credit : HST/STSCI


After more than one hour of travel from the Sun at the speed of light, we are in front of Saturn, a huge globe veiled with golden highlights. We are a billion and a half kilometers from the Sun. It looks like a small disk of light, but thousands of times brighter than our full moon.


Surrounded by its rings that stretch of 272 000 km, the sixth planet has always been regarded as the jewel of the solar system, and a very long time as a unique case when it was the outermost planet and the only one with rings.