3D planet view · HST OPAL observational composite
Explore Saturn in COSMOS
HST OPAL Cycle 32 Rotation A cloud-top observation acquired 2025-08-29, shown on a reference oblate ellipsoid with measured rings. It is a historical atmospheric map, not terrain or a live weather layer. The link below opens the explorer, flying the camera to Saturn with its position set by the archived planetary state.
Measured facts
- Mean radius
- 58,232 kmPublished mean radius stored as renderer geometry.
- Mean diameter
- 116,464 km
- Reference shape
- Oblate reference ellipsoid · flattening 0.0980Equatorial 60,268 km, polar 54,364 km. No terrain displacement or cloud-height model.
- Distance from Earth at the recorded epoch
- 1,291,110,351 km · 71.78 minutes light time
- Closest camera approach
- 4.0 equatorial radii
What opens when you follow this link
COSMOS opens in the same continuous 3D scene and moves the camera to Saturn. Nothing reloads, and the breadcrumb trail stays clickable for the way back outward through the Solar System, the measured stellar catalogue and the Galactic view.
If your browser cannot run WebGL2, this page is still the useful part: it carries the identity, the measured values and the provenance, in text.
Where the full record lives
This page is the share link. The complete data record for Saturn — delivered imagery resolution, observation epoch, source licence, processing chain and every disclosed limitation — is on its reference page, which is linked below.
Datasets behind this page
- JPL Horizons planetary state archive (2020–2040)NASA/JPL Horizons · derived-scientific-model · One discrete geometric state vector per object at JD 2461281.5 TDB
- Hubble OPAL Cycle 32 Saturn cloud-top mapMAST/STScI · Hubble Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy · observational-composite · 5 pixels per degree; approximately 210 km equatorial map sampling, not a uniform atmospheric feature-resolution claim
- Measured Saturnian ring boundary radiiNASA Goddard Space Flight Center / NASA Saturnian Rings Fact Sheet · measured-catalogue-data · Ring boundaries represented by published mean radii; no particle-scale structure
Content updated 2026-09-26. Every value on this page is computed from the shipped datasets; where a source publishes no value, the page says so instead of estimating one.