Saturn

Saturn
Political Specifications
Designation
Affiliation	unaligned
Location	Sol
Sector	001
Quadrant	Alpha/Beta
World Status	Non-Resource
Orbital Characteristics
Physical Characteristics
Class	J
Population Data
Dominant Lifeform

Astronomical Data

Names

• Sol VII
• Saturn
• Sani/Shani
• Shabbathai
• Zuhal

Satellites

Natural

• Mimas
• Enceladus
• Tethys
• Dione
• Rhea
• Titan
• Iapetus
• 53 lesser moons
• large ring system

Artificial

• none

History

Saturn has been known since prehistoric times. In ancient times, it was the most distant of the five known planets in the solar system (excluding Earth) and thus a major character in various mythologies. In ancient Roman mythology, the god Saturnus, from which the planet takes its name, was the god of the agricultural and harvest sector. The Romans considered Saturnus the equivalent of the Greek god Kronos. The Greeks had made the outermost planet sacred to Kronos, and the Romans followed suit.

In Hindu astrology, there are nine astrological objects, known as Navagrahas. Saturn, one of them, is known as "Sani" or "Shani," the Judge among all the planets, and by everyone accordingly to their own performed deeds bad or good. Ancient Chinese and Japanese culture designated the planet Saturn as the earth star. This was based on Five Elements which were traditionally used to classify natural elements. In ancient Hebrew, Saturn is called 'Shabbathai'. Its angel is Cassiel. Its intelligence, or beneficial spirit, is Agiel (layga), and its spirit (darker aspect) is Zazel (lzaz). In Ottoman Turkish and in Malay, its name is 'Zuhal', derived from Arabic زحل.

Saturn's rings require at least a 75 mm diameter telescope to resolve and thus were not known to exist until Galileo first saw them in 1610. He, though, thought of them as two moons on Saturn's sides. It was not until Christian Huygens used greater telescopic magnification that the rings were assumed to be rings. Huygens also discovered Saturn's moon Titan. Some time later, Jean-Dominique Cassini discovered four other moons: Iapetus, Rhea, Tethys, and Dione. In 1675, Cassini also discovered the gap now known as the Cassini Division.

No further discoveries of significance were made until 1789 when William Herschel discovered two further moons, Mimas and Enceladus. The irregularly shaped satellite Hyperion, which has a resonance with Titan, was discovered in 1848 by a British team.

In 1899 William Henry Pickering discovered Phoebe, a highly irregular satellite that does not rotate synchronously with Saturn as the larger moons do. Phoebe was the first such satellite found, and it takes more than a year to orbit Saturn in a retrograde orbit. During the early twentieth century, research on Titan led to the confirmation in 1944 that it had a thick atmosphere - a feature unique among the solar system's moons.

Important Locations

• None