saturn looks like a faint star in the night sky But early sky-watchers saw that Saturn and four other stars seemed to move slowly in the night sky These stars were called planets from a Greek word that means wanderers Saturn is a planet It was named after the Roman god of farming
Today we know that there are eight major planets in our Solar System These planets travel around the sun in paths called orbits Earth is the third closest planet to the sun Saturn is the sixth planet from the sun Saturn is about 890 million miles 1 4 billion kilometers from the sun Saturn is so far away in space that it takes nearly thirty years for it to orbit the sun once SATURN JUPITER SUN EARTh
The unmanned spaceship Cassini was launched in October 1997 Cassini took this photo of the colorful globe of Saturn’s largest moon Titan as it passed in front of the planet and its rings Cassini traveled much faster than even the fastest jet plane yet it still took more than three years to reach the distant planet
