Saturn

Saturn in natural colours, photographed on 6 October 2004 by Cassini-Huygens from a distance of 6.3 million km.

Saturn (ancient Egyptian: Hor-ka-pet; Hebrew: שַׁבְּתַאי Shabatai; Sanskrit: शनि Shani; astronomical sign: ♄) is in the occult sense the outermost planet of our solar system and closes it off, as it were, against the outer cosmos as an independent being. Saturn's sidereal orbital period is 29.457 years. According to Rudolf Steiner, the planets known today beyond Saturn, in particular Uranus and Neptune, came into being later and are not directly connected with the straight-line development of our planetary system.

„It is the quality of Saturn, above all, to cool and seldom to dry, probably because it is farthest from the heat of the sun and the moist exhalations of the earth. In the case of both Saturn and the other planets, there are also forces arising from the observation of their aspects to the Sun and Moon, for some of them seem to modify - by increase or decrease - conditions in the environment in one way, some in another.“

– Claudius Ptolemy: Terabiblos, Book I, The Power of the Planets

Every 20 years or so, a Great Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter takes place. Some astronomers and historians suggest that the Star of Bethlehem at the time of Jesus' birth may have been a Great Conjunction in the years 7 to 6 B.C. The most recent, spiritually very significant Great Conjunction occurred in the evening of December 21, 2020, in the zodiac sign of Capricorn.

The physical planet

Saturn is the sixth planet in the solar system as seen from the Sun and, with an equatorial diameter of about 120,500 kilometres (9.5 times Earth's diameter), is the second largest after Jupiter. However, with 95 Earth masses, it has only 30 % of Jupiter's mass. Because of its conspicuous ring system, visible even in a small telescope, it is often called the ring planet, although ring systems have also been found on the other three gas planets.

Saturn has an average distance from the Sun of a good 1.43 billion kilometres, its orbit runs between that of Jupiter and that of Uranus, which is further away from the Sun. It is the outermost planet that is also clearly visible to the naked eye and was therefore known thousands of years before the invention of the telescope.

As a gas planet, Saturn has no solid surface. Its upper layers consist of about 96% hydrogen. Of all the planets in the solar system, Saturn has the lowest mean density (about 0.69 g/cm³). Saturn stands out from the other planets because of its distinctive, bright and long-known rings, which consist largely of chunks of water ice and rock.

The apparent angular diameter of the planetary body is between 15″ and 20″, depending on the distance from Earth, and that of the rings between 37″ and 46″. The so-called equatorial stripes of the cloud layers are less distinct on Saturn than on Jupiter, which is probably related to a high-layered haze.

As of 2019, 82 of Saturn's moons have been discovered, more than Jupiter's. Saturn's largest moon by far is Titan, 5150 kilometres across.

The planet is named after the Roman god of wealth and harvest, Saturn. Its astronomical symbol ♄ stylises the god's crescent.

Literature

• Thorsten Dambeck: Saturnmond in Fetzen: Die Saturnringe könnten die Trümmer eines zerborstenen Mondes sein. Bild der Wissenschaft, 9/2006, S. 60–63, ISSN 0006-2375
• Ronald Weinberger: Präzise Bestimmung der Rotation des Saturn. Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau 59 (12), S. 664–665 (2006), ISSN 0028-1050
• Reinhard Oberschelp: Giuseppe Campani und der Ring des Planeten Saturn. Ein Dokument in der Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Bibliothek. Reihe Lesesaal, 35. C. W. Niemeyer, Hameln 2011, ISBN 3-8271-8835-0 (u. a. mit Abb. von 1666)
• Rudolf Steiner: Der Mensch als Zusammenklang des schaffenden, bildenden und gestaltenden Weltenwortes, GA 230 (1993), ISBN 3-7274-2300-5 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org
• Rudolf Steiner: Bilder okkulter Siegel und Säulen. Der Münchner Kongreß Pfingsten 1907 und seine Auswirkungen., GA 284 (1993), ISBN 3-7274-2840-6 English: rsarchive.org German: pdf pdf(2) html mobi epub archive.org

References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated. Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com. Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English. Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA) Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.