If you have ever seen a picture of Saturn, you may have noticed that the planet looks somewhat squashed. The picture is not flawed, however, because Saturn truly is flattened at the top and bottom! This effect is caused by the extremely fast rotation of the planet and since the composition is very fluid, it becomes much more oblate the other more rocky planets. Its equatorial diameter versus its polar diameter varies by as much as 10% (120,536 kilometers versus 108,728 kilometers). It spins an extremely fast rate of one rotation on its axis every 10 hours, 39 minutes. Its orbital time is 29.5 Earth years.
Flattening of the Planet 
