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The Planet Saturn

Date Submitted: 06/23/2003 21:58:59
Category: / Science & Technology
Length: 2 pages (461 words)
Less than one-third the mass of Jupiter, Saturn is still an enormous planet. Saturn has a mass of about 95 Earths and has a very rapid rotation rate. Because its rotation rate is so rapid, it has an obvious oblateness. This oblateness is caused by a outward push at the middle, from the spin rate, causing a large bulge at the planet's equator and a flattening at the planet's pole regions. Saturn is well known for …
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…layer and a molecular hydrogen layer. Traces of various ices are also present. Saturn's interior is hot (12000 K at the core) and Saturn radiates more energy into space than it receives from the Sun. Most of the extra energy is generated by the Kelvin-Helmholtz mechanism as in Jupiter. But this may not be sufficient to explain Saturn's luminosity; some additional mechanism may be at work, perhaps the "raining out" of helium deep in Saturn's interior.
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