Saturn
Data as of July 2026
116,460 kmacross
Saturn is 116,460 km across (9.1× wider than Earth) and orbits the Sun at 9.58 AU: about 1,433,147,595 km. Sunlight takes 1.3 hours to reach it. The jewel of the solar system: a ringed giant of hydrogen and helium with a vast retinue of moons.
▶ Visit Saturn in 3D
What kind of world is it?
Saturn’s rings span about 280,000 km, three quarters of the distance from Earth to the Moon, yet in places they are only around ten metres thick: proportionally thinner than a sheet of paper the size of a city. They are made of countless chunks of nearly pure water ice, from dust grains to house-sized boulders, each on its own orbit.
Saturn’s mean density is less than water: it would float. The rings may be younger than the dinosaurs, and are as little as 10 m thick.
Saturn by the numbers
Diameter
116,460 km
Distance from the Sun
9.58 AU
Sunlight travel time
1.3 hours
Surface gravity
10.4 m/s²
Temperature
−140 °C at cloud tops
A day lasts
10.7 hours
A year lasts
29.5 Earth years
Known moons
285+ (most of any planet)
Notable moons
Saturn has 285+ (most of any planet) known moons. The ones worth meeting:
Numbers only get you so far. The distances are the part nobody's brain handles: in the interactive view, switch to 1:1 scale and watch Saturn shrink to an honest speck on an enormous empty orbit.
Keep going
✓ Facts verified July 2026
Every figure on this page is a real, rounded value checked against primary sources. Found something out of date? See how we keep it accurate.