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What Is the Average Temperature of Saturn?

Saturn's average distance from the sun is approximately 1.4 billion kilometers (886 million miles), which is more than nine times the distance between the sun and Earth. At that distance, it isn't surprising that Saturn is cold, but it would be even colder if it wasn't warmed by its own radiation.

Three Cloud Layers
- Saturn doesn't have any solid ground, and the gaseous atmosphere contains three distinct cloud layers. The uppermost one, which consists primarily of ammonia, experiences temperatures of around minus 250 degrees Celsius (minus 418 degrees Fahrenheit). Temperatures in the layer of ammonium hydrosulfide clouds below that are about minus 70 degrees Celsius (minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit). Still lower -- about 170 kilometers (105 miles) below the top of the upper cloud layer -- are clouds of water vapor, where temperatures reach zero degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit), which is the freezing point of water.
Little Surface Variation
- Saturn radiates more than twice the energy that it receives from the sun, so most of its warmth comes from inside the planet itself. For this reason, the temperature difference between the equatorial and polar regions is small -- only 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit). Scientists estimate the temperature at the core of the giant planet to be around 11,000 degrees Celsius (21,000 degrees Fahrenheit).

Astronomy