Saturn was named after the Roman god of agriculture (Arnett). Most of the Roman gods were, in actuality, Greek gods with Roman names. Saturn was cross-references with Greek god, Cronus, who was the ruling Titan god. According to myth, when Cronus was overthrown by Zeus (his son), he fled to Italy. There he ruled as Saturn and the "period of his rule was said to be a golden age on earth, honored by the Saturnalia Feast" (Hunt).

The earliest known observations of Saturn were made by the Mesopotamians in the mid-seventh century B.C. The records that were kept pertained to the positions of Saturn in the night skies. The astrologer-priests of that time intepreted these positions as Omens (Alexander, 41-44).

The 3-bodied image Galileo thought made up Saturn.

July 1610, Galileo made the first observations of Saturn through a telescope. Since his telescope wasn't very powerful (20-powered), he wasn't able to get a good view of the planet and misintepreted what he saw. Instead of a single-bodied planet, he thought there were 3 individual bodies (Gehrels).

July 1616, Galileo was surprised by a change in the appearance of Saturn. Instead of the 3-bodied image, he saw what appeared to be a globe with two half-circles attached to it. Again, the limits of his telescope led to his misinterpretation of the information (Gehrels).

In 1659, Christiaan Huygens was the first to postulate the ring theory. Many of the scientists accepted the theory quickly but there were many who opposed it. (Gehrels).

Saturn was visited by the Pioneer 11 space probe in Sept. 1979. After that, it was visited by Voyager 1 in Nov. 1980 and then by Voyager 2 in Aug. 1981 (Morrison, 275).

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