Word: planetful
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...miles) across at the edge of the ring system. They were designated 513 and S-14, because they are the 13th and 14th to be discovered. 513 circles Saturn just outside the so-called Fring, which is about 80,000 km (50,000 miles) from the planet's cloud tops -the gaseous sphere has no real surface. 514 revolves just inside that ring. Like dogs herding sheep along a narrow road, the outer moon seems to be keeping ring particles from flying off into space, while the inner moon stops them from falling toward Saturn-as one scientist...
...mute or intensify colors to help bring out the faintest details. It was during a photographic fine-tuning session, while he was rerunning fairly distant views of Saturn on the TV screen, that J.P.L. Scientist Stewart Collins, working with David Carlson, a visiting student from Drexel University, discovered the planet's 13th and 14th moons...
...what keen-eyed observer in the dawn of history first picked out Saturn as a planet, or heavenly wanderer, from the dizzying background of myriad fixed stars. Probably the first stargazers to leave a record of Saturn's appearance in different parts of the night sky were the Sumerians...
They lived in southern Mesopotamia about 5,000 years ago and, according to George Michanowsky, a scholar of cuneiform writing, they called the planet Sag-Ush, regarding it as a male fertility symbol. The Babylonians, who eventually ruled over that part of Mesopotamia, watched the heavens from the tops of their ziggurats. To them Saturn was known as Kaiamanu (the steadfast one), possibly because, in contrast to nearer planets, it moved so slowly across the skies. Kaiamanu was generally associated with the death of cattle, and other calamities. Perhaps in hopes of better luck, one of the names the Egyptians...
...fiery imagination of the Greeks created more elaborate tales about the golden planet. The Greeks called it Cronus, after the evil-tempered son of Earth and Heaven, who married his sister Rhea and devoured five of his own children because he feared them as rivals. Finally, when Zeus, the sixth, was born, Rhea tricked Cronus into swallowing a stone instead. After he was dethroned by Zeus (who became the king of the gods), Cronus went off to rule another kingdom, where he reformed his ways and taught people the secrets of planting. The Romans knew Cronus as Saturn...