Question #50 – Saturn is very far from the Sun, so it takes a long time to travel around the Sun once. A year on Saturn is 29½ Earth years! How long is a day on Saturn?

Answer:

A single day on a planet is defined as the time it takes to rotate (spin) once on its axis. One day on Earth is 24 hours. Saturn's day is only about 10.6 hours! Saturn is not made of rocks or metals with a solid surface, rather it is a gas giant made of gasses such as hydrogen and helium, with a small rocky core.

Saturn's winds swirl around the planet at more than 1,000 miles per hour, but the winds ar the equator are faster than those at the poles making the planet an oblate spheroid; this means that it is flattened at the poles and bulges at the equator.

New information from NASA's Cassini spacecraft has determined that Saturn's day is 10 hours, 33 minutes and 38 seconds long.

For more information, read How Long Is a Day on Saturn? Scientists Finally Solve a Lingering Mystery at Space.com

Moons of Saturn: Astronomy Picture of the Day, 17 October 2019
Image credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, NASA