Saturn data
Diameter: 74,900 miles
Time to rotate: 10 hours, 39 minutes
Orbit: 29.5 years

Saturn is the second largest planet in our solar system, making it about 95 times larger than the Earth! The sixth planet out from the sun, it takes Saturn about 29.5 years to orbit the sun one time, traveling a distance of roughly 1,426,000,000 kilometers for one single revolution! This distant planet is famous for its rings and more than 30 discovered moons!

Much like its neighbor Jupiter, the sixth planet from the sun has a rocky core and a gaseous surface. But Saturn is chiefly known for its intricate series of rings that encircle it. The mile-thick rings are made of countless orbiting ice particles, from less than an inch to several feet in size. Up close, it's clear that Saturn has more rings than we can count. But though you can't see all of them from Earth, you can spot three of them with a good telescope,.

The two outermost rings are separated by a dark band called the Cassini Division, named for the astronomer who discovered it in 1675. The Cassini division isn't empty, but it has less material in it. The middle ring is the brightest, and just inside it is a fuzzy one that can be difficult to spot.

Saturn has 30+ known satellites, made mostly of ice and rock. The largest, Titan, orbits Saturn every 16 days and is visible through a good-sized amateur telescope. Titan, which is larger than the planet Mercury, has a thick atmosphere that obscures its surface. Though researchers aren't sure how many moons Saturn has, the total is likely at least 30, and may be much higher.

Astronomers have found the strongest evidence yet for an ocean beneath the icy shell of Saturn's Enceladus, suggesting it could join the exclusive club of watery moons in our solar system.

The salty water is likely feeding jets of water-ice that spurt from the moon's south polar region. Such plumes were first reported in 2005, and ever since, astronomers have suspected a liquid ocean might lie beneath the icy shell of Saturn's sixth largest moon.

The new finding, published in the June 25 issue of the journal Nature, could bump this diminutive world — measuring 310 miles (500 km) in diameter (about the width of Arizona) — into a class that includes Jupiter's Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.