Saturn explained to kids

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest in our solar system. Saturn is almost as big as Jupiter, but not quite: its diameter is about 120,000 km (75,000 miles). That's still huge! Even though it's not as big as Jupiter, Saturn is very dense. In fact, if you could find a big enough ocean, Saturn would float in it! Saturn is named after the Roman god of agriculture. The Greek equivalent is Cronus. Like Jupiter, Saturn can be seen without a telescope. It's usually the fifth-brightest object in our sky, after the Sun, moon, Jupiter, and Venus. The famous astronomer Galileo Galilei was the first person to study Saturn in 1610, using a homemade telescope. Saturn is a gas giant, which means it's mostly made of the gases hydrogen and helium. There's no solid surface on Saturn that you could stand on. The inside of Saturn is very hot, and the outside is very cold. The temperature at Saturn's equator is about -288 °F, but at the poles it can be as cold as -360 °F! That's colder than any place on Earth. Saturn has some very interesting features. One is its rings. Saturn's rings are made of ice and dust, and they're very thin. They're also very bright! Another interesting feature of Saturn is its moon, Titan. Titan is the second largest moon in our solar system (after Jupiter's moon Ganymede). Titan is very cold, and it has an atmosphere that is similar to Earth's atmosphere a long time ago. Several spacecraft have visited or passed by Saturn, including the Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, Voyager 2, Cassini, and New Horizons.