Who discovered the planet saturn?

Question

Anyone know?

Answer 1

Saturn has been known since antiquity and was named after the Roman God of agriculture (Latin: Saturnus) who has given his name both to Saturday and to the Bacchic feast of Saturnalia (a winter solstice carnival).

Other cultures that observed it in ancient times gave it different names: Saturn is known as "Sani" or "Shani" in Hindu Astrology. Sani's father is the Sun God "Surya". Chinese and Japanese culture designate the planet Saturn as the earth star. In Hebrew, Saturn is called 'Shabbathai'. In Bahasa Malaysia (the Malay language), its name is 'Zuhal'. Probably only a historian could work out which culture discovered it first and the records may not exist in all cases,

If I had to hazard a guess, I would think the Chinese may have been among the first. This is based on the following statement in Wikipedia; "Ganymede (Jupiter's largest moon, discovered by Galileo in 1610) may have been previously discovered by Chinese astronomer Gan De in 364 BC." Gan De is known to have written a Treatise on Jupiter (the text is lost) and in 1973, a catalogue by him and Shi Shen was uncovered in Mawangdui, which is arranged under the name of Divination of Five Planets, and records the motion of Jupiter, Saturn, Venus and other planets in their orbits between 246 BC and 177 BC. (see 2nd link).

Saturn is visible to the unaided eye and appears to in the night sky as a bright, yellowish disc of light, varying usually between magnitude +1 and 0 (Magnitude -0.5 at at its brightest),

What is not visible with the naked eye (unaided eye) however is its rings and its moons, and those were discovered by particular people, as telescopes were developed in the last 400 years,

THE RINGS:

The rings were first observed by Galileo Galilei in 1610 with his telescope, but he was unable to identify them as such. He wrote to the Duke of Tuscany that "The planet Saturn is not alone, but is composed of three, which almost touch one another and never move nor change with respect to one another. They are arranged in a line parallel to the zodiac, and the middle one (Saturn itself) is about three times the size of the lateral ones [the edges of the rings]."

He also described Saturn as having "ears." In 1612 the plane of the rings was oriented directly at the Earth and the rings appeared to vanish, and then in 1613 they reappeared again, further confusing Galileo.

In 1655, Christiaan Huygens became the first person to suggest that Saturn was surrounded by a ring. Using a telescope that was far superior to those available to Galileo, Huygens observed Saturn and wrote that "It [Saturn] is surrounded by a thin, flat, ring, nowhere touching, inclined to the ecliptic."

In 1675, Giovanni Domenico Cassini determined that Saturn's ring was actually composed of multiple smaller rings with gaps between them; the largest of these gaps was later named the Cassini Division.

We now know there are many rings with moons interspsersed in the gaps between them.

This NASA factsheet gives more details: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/satringfact.html

THE MOONS:

45 Years after Galileo discovered the Jovian moons Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa in 1610, the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens discovered Saturn's largest moon Titan on March 25th 1655. Given Jupiter had moons, why not Saturn too?

It was a logical place to look. But it took 45 years to find as Saturn is 10 AU from the Sun and Jupiter is 5 AU from the Sun, and even though Titan and Ganymede are similar in size, Titan is magnitude 7.8 to 8.7 where Ganymede is magnitude 4.6 and visible under dark sky conditions.

Cassini discovered 4 more Saturnian moons in the latter part of the 17th Century. Iapetus on October 25, 1671 and Rhea on December 23, 1672. Cassini published these two discoveries in Découverte de deux nouvelles planètes autour de Saturne in 1673,

Twelve years later, Cassini found two more: Tethys and Dione on March 21, 1684. Cassini published these two discoveries on April 22, 1686,

Two more were discovered in 1789 by Sir William Herschel (who had discovered Uranus and its two largest moons Titania and Oberon earlier in that decade): Enceladus on August 28th 1789 and Mimas on September 17th 1789.

He published his findings in 1790 as Account of the Discovery of a Sixth and Seventh Satellite of the Planet Saturn; With Remarks on the Construction of Its Ring, Its Atmosphere, Its Rotation on an Axis, and Its Spheroidical Figure,

An eighth moon, Hyperion was discovered on September 16, 1848 by Lassell who had discovered Neptune's moon Triton, 2 years earlier.

A ninth, Phoebe was discovered by Pickering on August 16, 1898 but the tenth, Janus was not discovered until the modern era on December 15, 1966 by Dollfus.

Up to the start of the Space Age, then,10 moons were known to orbit Saturn.

In 1980, the Voyager space probes discovered 8 more moons in the inner Saturnian system, the last of which, Pan, was identified ten years later.

A survey starting in late 2000 found 13 new moons orbiting Saturn at a great distance in orbits that suggest they are fragments of larger bodies captured by Saturn's gravitational pull (Nature vol. 412, pp. 163–166).

The Cassini mission, which arrived at Saturn in the summer of 2004, discovered three small moons in the inner Saturnian system as well as three suspected but unconfirmed moons in the F Ring. This increased the total to 37 moons, confirmed and unconfirmed.

On November 16, 2004, Cassini scientists announced that the structure of Saturn's rings indicates the presence of several more moons orbiting within the rings, but only one, Daphnis, has been visually confirmed so far (its confirmation was announced on May 6, 2005).

On May 3, 2005, astronomers using the Mauna Kea Observatory announced the discovery of 12 more small outer moons.

On June 30, 2006, astronomers using the Subaru 8.2-m telescope announced the discovery of 9 more small outer moons

That makes 59, including 3 unconfirmed ones.

Answer 2

There is no single person who is credited with the discovery of Saturn. Saturn is one of the five planets that can be seen in the night sky without using a telescope or binoculars. The planet Saturn has been known since ancient times and was observed for thousands of years by the people of many different cultures.

Answer 3

The planet Saturn has been pointed out thinking that historic situations. be conscious: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn have been known because previous situations, Uranus was once found out March 13, 1781 and Neptune on September 23, 1846.