From a drawing by Bond.] Saturn takes twenty-nine and a half years to complete a journey about the sun.

Like Jupiter, it rotates very rapidly on its axis, the period being ten hours and fourteen minutes.

Its axis of rotation is inclined not far from the same angle as that of the earth's axis (26 deg.
49 min.), so that its seasons should resemble ours, although their alternations are extremely slow in consequence of the enormous length of Saturn's year.
Not including the rings in the calculation, Saturn exceeds the earth in size 760 times.

The addition of the rings would not, however, greatly alter the result of the comparison, because, although the total surface of the rings, counting both faces, exceeds the earth's surface about 160 times, their volume, owing to their surprising thinness, is only about six times the volume of the earth, and their mass, in consequence of their slight density, is very much less than the earth's, perhaps, indeed, inappreciable in comparison.
Saturn's mean diameter is 73,000 miles, and its polar compression is even greater than that of Jupiter, a difference of 7,000 miles--almost comparable with the entire diameter of the earth--existing between its equatorial and its polar diameter, the former being 75,000 and the latter 68,000 miles.
We found the density of Jupiter astonishingly slight, but that of Saturn is slighter still.

Jupiter would sink if thrown into water, but Saturn would actually float, if not "like a cork," yet quite as buoyantly as many kinds of wood, for its mean density is only three quarters that of water, or one eighth of the earth's.