Some Facts:

• 886 million miles / 1,429 million km from Sun
• orbits Sun in about 29 Earth years
• rotation (day) is a little over 10 hours
  
• 75,000 miles in diameter
• Rings: made of ice and rock particles from small grains to the size of a house, probably pieces of comets or asteroids that broke up before they reached the planet. Rings orbit at different speeds.
• Moons: Titan is the largest (larger than Mercury), and the next six in size are Rhea, Iapetus, Dione, Tethys, Enceladus, Mimas. Twenty-three others had been discovered before 2001. Titan may have methane oceans.
  

Observing Notes

• Saturn is in Gemini in 2004, visible in the evening sky through May.
• rings will be beautifully positioned for several years. They will be edge-on (and invisible) by 2009.
• pale butterscotch color on the planet, banding visible
• the moon Titan is often visible
  

Filters:
(from the information provided with Celestron filter packages)

The following filters all say: "Penetrates and darkens the atmospheric currents containing low-hue blue tones and enhances the orange and red features of bands and zones."

• Yellow (#8, 83% T)
• Deep Yellow (#12, 74% T)
• Deep Yellow (#15, 67% T)

Other filters:

• Orange (#21, 46% T): Improves structure of the Saturnian bands and bluish polar regions.
• Red (#23a, 25% T): Useful for studying the bluer clouds and the polar regions.
• Red (#25, 14% T): Useful for studying the bluer clouds.
• Blue (#38a, 17% T): Enhances low-contrast details between the belts and zones.
• Violet (#47, 3% T): Useful in ring structure studies.
• Green (#58, 24% T): Enhances white features in the Saturnian atmosphere.
• Light Blue (#80a, 30% T): Enhances low-contrast details between the belts and zones.
• Pale Blue (#82a, 73% T): Enhances low-contrast details of cloud formations

Sources:
     Moore, Patrick. The Observer's Year. Springer, 1998.
     Harrington, Philip. Touring the Universe Through Binoculars. Wiley, 1990.
     NASA Planets web site: www.jpl.nasa.gov/solar_system/planets/saturn_index.html
            and sse.jpl.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Saturn

Exploratory missions: (information on NASA Saturn programs:

• Fly-by: Pioneer 11 (1979)
• Voyager 1 (Nov 1980) & Voyager 2 (Aug 1981)
• Cassini-Huygens (arrives July 2004)