Are you ready for more adventures through the planets? ⭐

On this page we travel even further away from Earth towards Saturn. Zip up your spacesuit, buckle up in your spaceship and let’s go!

Missed Mars and Jupiter? Click hereto travel to the red planet, Mars or here to travel to the gas giant, Jupiter.

Saturn: the Bringer of Old Age

• Like Jupiter, Saturn is made of gas – mostly hydrogen and helium.
• Saturn isn’t the only planet to have rings around it, but we think it has the most beautiful ones. There are seven rings surrounding the planet made of ice and rock which sparkle in the sun!
• One day on Saturn goes by in just 10.7 hours and one year is the same as 29 Earth years.

For more facts on Saturn, visit NASA’s website here

Holst called Saturn the Bringer of Old Age and the music for this planet is slow and 'plodding'.

Alastair Bruce from the Royal Observatory Edinburgh thinks Holst should have named Saturn something else, find out what he thinks below:

LISTEN 🎧

Close your eyes and listen to Holst’s music for Saturn. While you are listening, think about your journey so far..

• Who are you travelling with? Is it another member of your family? Or a famous astronaut? 👩‍🚀 👨‍🚀
• What is it like inside your spaceship?🚀
• What have we seen? Think about passing Mars and Jupiter, can you remember what those planets were like? 🌌

You can watch Saturn being performed by The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra below, many other recordings are available online through platforms such as YouTube and Spotify.

Activity 🖋️

• Take a pen and paper and write down what you thought about when you were listening to the music for Saturn.
• Can you put these thoughts into a poem?
• You could start with describing what it was like to set out on this journey – who you are with and what your spaceship looks and sounds like.
• Then write about the planets we have visited – Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – can you describe them to help the reader understand what the planets look like?
• Finally, let your imagination go wild – where are we going next? Perhaps it’s another planet in our solar system, or a completely new planet that is undiscovered!

Please share your creations!

We would love to see what you have been inspired to create, please email us on info@sco.org.uk