THE middle of the road planet is also the middle one in every way. A sedate loiterer, careering in the middle of the Solar System, planet Saturn has five inner and three outer planets to serve as neighbours in the pretty crowded system (I still regard Pluto as a planet and not a planetoid).

Also regarded as a classical planet, Saturn has been known to mankind before the discovery of those that required at least an optical telescope, not to speak of the right kind of mathematics to work out their potential presence in the skies.

The glittering prize of Saturn and its claim to fame continues to be its lovely ring system. Though another claim is no less potent: the planets numerous moons many dozens of them, (maybe some more) that lie hidden inside its irrepressible ring system. Their orbits around the master planet are no less interesting. They orbit independent of the ring system.

But surely the moons are prodded and nudged by the rings that house them. And I can see collisions galore; smaller pieces ramming into the bigger ones and, in the bargain hurting themselves before disappearing, digging those ominous craters on the face of the boss.

Understandably, there is wide space between individual moons and the debris forming the ring system. The space is wide enough for the moons to roam freely but not without some, if occasional obstruction as stated above. Most of these so-called moons are not moons at all: they are captured asteroids of irregular shapes which could not coalesce into round shapes as large moons do, but remained in mountain-like shapes.

For a long while Saturn was considered the limit of the Solar System; until 1781 when William Herschel, the German musician living in England discovered planet Uranus, which instantly earned him the most coveted prize of royal proximity. He was employed as Astronomer Royale in the court of King George V. Soon he ended up discovering two moons of the planet (Oberon and Titania).

There is much more to Saturn than meets the eye. But for present we shall confine ourselves to the moons of this planet in fact, some of the moons, of the portion of the Solar System so far. For the other moons, let us first get over with planets from Uranus to Pluto, then their moons).

Most of the icy moons of Saturn are tiny, and very cold for their distance away from the Sun. But, of the lot, Titan is large enough to have oceans, if frozen. With a diameter of 5150km it is larger than planet Mercury. That gives you an idea of its enormous size. Titan, together with Jupiters Ganymede is large (and pretentious!) enough to cool over the billenia(eh!) and also have an atmosphere, probably containing elements associated with living organisms like hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and nitrogen, as on the Earth.

Titans atmosphere is far denser than that of Earths. Its surface temperature is -180C. However, some astronomers feel that some organic (life-giving) molecules might have rained onto its surface providing Titan with some form of life in the early ages of its history (say, in the first couple of billion years or so). Its orange coloured clouds are more than 250km deep with an even deeper haze layer which makes the observation and study of the moon very difficult. The question of life, then what kind of life, is a question that has defied an answer thus far.

The large moons of Saturn are composed of ice mixed with a great deal of rocks, making them somewhat Earth-like. Virtually all of them have crater marks, some others (notably Mimas) have numerous craters, probably more than the Earths Moon. It has borne the brunt of meteor, comet and asteroid bombardment like little else.

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Astronomy: Saturn: the lord of moons - DAWN.COM