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Meet our neighbours: Saturn

Created: 2026-08-10

Author(s):
Lina Canas

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System. It is famous for its spectacular system of rings, made of countless pieces of ice and rock and for this reason it is called "the Lord of the rings". To discover this fascinating world, let's build a tactile version of Saturn using cheap, household items. Just like the other activities of the "Meet our Neighbours" series, the tactile Saturn will be a great resource to explore a planet for both visually impaired and normal vision students.

NOTE: The "Meet our neighbours!" project is published in AstroEDU in this activity Collection. It was produced by NUCLIO and Europlanet and supported by Galileo Teaching Training Program and GalileoMobile. You can find more information at this Link

Materials

For each group bulding a tactile Saturn:

Copies of the attached PDF files (two copies of Tactile_Saturn.pdf and one copy of Tactile_Saturn_Mold.pdf)
thick fabric
thin fabric
sand (rings)
Glue and scissors

NOTE: These materials are only suggestions; all textures can be replaced by other local, easy to find, low-cost materials.

Image: the 2 files to be printed

Goals

To explore planet Saturn through a tactile hands-on experience for visually impaired students and their non-visually impaired peers.

Learning Objectives

Students will explore and learn the characteristics of Saturn using the tactile model: its rings and its atmosphere .

Background

Saturn is the second largest planet in the solar system. Its equatorial diameter is 120,000 km (9.5 that of Earth) and its mass equals 95 times that of Earth. Its average distance from the Sun is 1.42 million km and it takes slightly more than 29 years to complete its orbit.

One of the gas giants
With Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune, Saturn is part of the gaseous giant planets which are mainly composed of hydrogen (H2: 86%) and helium (He: 14%). The mix of minor gases (ammonia, methane, phosphine, water vapor, etc.) is very similar to that found in Jupiter’s atmosphere and the cloud structure is also similar, although with a different extent in altitude. It is also believed that the core of the planet is a solid mixture of rocks and ices of a few times the mass of Earth.

Saturn's moons and rings
Saturn is surrounded by more than 50 natural satellites, the smallest being only a few kilometres in diameter. The largest of them is Titan. It has a thick atmosphere resembling that of Earth but at a much colder temperature (-200°C to -100°C). In January 2005, the Huygens probe, built by the European Space Agency, descended into the atmosphere and landed safely on the surface after analysing the content of the atmosphere. Many of the atmospheric phenomena (hazes, fogs, clouds, rainstorms), and surface features (lakes, hills, dunes) found on Earth are also present on Titan.

Surface features
Similarly to Jupiter, the atmosphere of Saturn is organized in zones and bands parallel to the equator but the contrast between these areas is much less marked. At the poles, the upper atmosphere is filled with darker particles (materialized by the thick fabric on the tactile image) produced by the interaction of the gas with energetic particles precipitated along the magnetic field lines.

An intense meteorological activity takes place in Saturn’s atmosphere. The equatorial winds are even more powerful than on Jupiter, with maximum speeds of more than 1,000 km/h. Regularly, storms appear at certain latitudes and last a few weeks. Even more powerful storms occur once every Saturnian year (or about every 30 years), spreading material from the deep atmosphere all around the planet,

Rings
The most remarkable object around Saturn is the magnificent ring system that can be observed even with a small telescope from Earth (materialized by the glued-on sand on the tactile image). This system is composed of three main rings (named A, B, and C), extending between 75,000 km and 137,000 km from the planet’s centre, as well as four other fainter rings (up to the G-ring) only visible with powerful instruments or from spacecraft orbiting Saturn. The main rings are thick enough to cast a shadow on the atmosphere beneath (materialized by the thick fabric on the tactile image). When observed up close, the rings appear made of thousands of ringlets packed together inside a ring. That is because the rings are made of millions of icy particles with sizes varying from a few centimetres to a few meters, each particle following its own orbit around Saturn, sometimes colliding or sticking with other particles, and undergoing the gravitational pull of small “shepherd” satellites inside the rings.

Full Description

Prior to the activity

Print two copies of Tactile_Saturn.pdf and one copy of Tactile_Saturn_mold.pdf for each group, and prepare the materials listed above.
Ask students what they know about Saturn, introducing it as the Lord of the rings, a gas giant with many moons and a beautiful system of rings around it. Tell students they will be making models of the planet to investigate its different features.

During the activity

Gather the children in groups of 5 elements – visually impaired and non-visually impaired (ideally three non-visually impaired to 2 visually impaired);
Distribute materials accordingly;
Close supervision is important. Follow each group and explain each of the tactile elements and their correspondence to each object feature.
Understand the different needs of each group of students to promote interaction between the students during the building of the tactile image – visually impaired students need to be familiarized with the different materials involved.
Give enough time to follow instructions and build the tactile image.

Build the tactile Saturn

Step 1
Cut the round shaped mold of the outer area of the planet;

Step 2
With a pen draw the shape according to the mold drawing in the thin fabric;

Step 3
Cut the light fabric and according to the mold drawing;

Step 4
Place the abundant glue on top of the paper circle area;

Step 5
Place the fabric on top of the glue;
Wait for the image to dry. This may take a while.

Step 6
Put abundant glue on the area that corresponds to the inner side of the rings and place sand on top of the glue;

Step 7
Clean the excess sand from the rings;

Step 8
Using the different molds cut the different sections 1;

Step 9
Using the molds cut the different section of fabric;

Step 10
Glue the different fabric on top of Image 09_Saturn_Image.

Wait for the image to dry. This may take a while.

Exploring the tactile Saturn

There are several ways in which you can explore the scientific content of the tactile schematic images. If you’re presenting the final tactile image to the students, first let them explore and feel the different textures. Questions will arise as the students explore; encourage them to write their questions down and share them with the other groups. Read “Background Information” to understand the different features present in Saturn's schematic tactile image, and share with the students as they ask about them, or (if you have more time), prompt each group to choose a feature to learn more about and then have them present to the other groups in the class.

In the image above, you can identify the following features:

(1) The thick fabric that represents the poles, where the upper atmosphere is filled with darker particles;
(2) the thin fabric represents Saturn's atmosphere;
(3) the glued-on sand that represents the magnificent ring system that can be observed even with a small telescope from Earth;
(4) The main rings are thick enough to cast a shadow on the atmosphere beneath, also materialized by the thick fabric on the tactile image.