Saturn's ring system is the most visually stunning structure in the solar system. The rings are made of billions of chunks of ice and rock, ranging from grains of sand to house-sized boulders. Despite spanning 282,000 kilometers, the rings are astonishingly thin — averaging just 10 meters in thickness.

The Lightest Planet

Saturn is the least dense planet in the solar system. Its average density is just 0.687 g/cm³, lower than water — if you could find a bathtub large enough, Saturn would float. Beneath the clouds it resembles Jupiter: layers of hydrogen and helium squeezed into liquid and, deeper still, into metallic hydrogen.