How many saturn days in a saturn year

Well, days is about how long it takes for Earth to orbit all the way around the Sun one time. A year is measured by how long it takes a planet to orbit around its star. Earth orbits around the Sun in approximately days. An Earth year is actually about days, plus approximately 6 hours. Read more about that here. All of the other planets in our solar system also orbit the Sun.

So, how long is a year on those planets? Well, it depends on where they are orbiting! Planets that orbit closer to the Sun than Earth have shorter years than Earth. Planets that orbit farther from the Sun than Earth have longer years than Earth. A planet orbiting close to its star has a shorter year than a planet orbiting farther from its star. A science writer might notice it and write about it.

That's how it happens that I'm writing today about a new measurement of the rotation period of Saturn that is different from past measurements. One of the Cassini mission's goals was to figure out how long a day on Saturn is. We still don't know. I actually think that's kind of wonderful. I often argue that a reason that space science is so accessible is that the questions that space scientists ask are very easy questions for the general public to understand.

Is there life elsewhere? Why is Venus different from Earth? If I lived on Saturn, how long would a day be there? The Voyager missions gave us one answer: 10 hours, 39 minutes, 24 seconds that is, This, by the way, is really fast. It's so fast that Saturn is very clearly oblate -- it's dramatically fatter at the equator than the poles, 10 percent wider than it is high.

Jupiter rotates fast, too, and is also oblate, but less so. Voyager measured the rotation rates of all four outer planets using their radio emissions. Electrons zipping around in magnetic fields generate radio emissions. All the giant planets have magnetic fields.

If the magnetic field has any angle to the rotation pole, then the magnetic field sweeps around the planet like the beam of a lighthouse, and there's a pulsing to the radio emissions in time with the planet's rotation rate. Voyager precisely measured the day lengths of Jupiter 9h 55m When Cassini got to Saturn, it also measured Saturn's rotation rate from its radio emissions. That's Saturn didn't slow down between Voyager in and Cassini in ; there is no force in the solar system that could have made such a massive planet slow its rotation so much, so rapidly.

One -- or both -- of the measurements was wrong. Later on in the Cassini mission, the team realized that their data showed different rotation rates in the northern and southern hemispheres! Much like the length of a single year, what we know about Saturn has a lot to do with its considerable distance from the Sun. In short, few missions have been able to study it in depth, and the length of a single year means it is difficult for a probe to witness all the seasonal changes the planet goes through.

Still, what we have learned has been considerable, and also quite impressive! We have written many articles about years on other planets here at Universe Today. How Long is a Year on Earth? How Long is a Year on Mercury?

How Long is a Year on Venus? How Long is a Year on Mars? How Long is a Year on Jupiter? How Long is a Year on Uranus? How Long is a Year on Neptune? How Long is a Year on Pluto? Listen here, Episode Saturn. Skip to content.

Orbital Period: Saturn orbits the Sun at an average distance semi-major axis of 1. Like this: Like Loading