Speculation About Saturn Having a Clear Atmosphere

[GlobeMaker]

The atmosphere of Saturn might be clear below the cloud tops. A solid core, the size of Earth may be floating in a transparent atmosphere. When a spacecraft tries to land on the solid core, it might descend through the cloud layer and arrive in a clear blue sky under the clouds. Lightning and plasma discharges could illuminate the view.

Every explored planet with an atmosphere has some clear atmosphere.
This would be like Venus. The Soviet Venera spacecraft landed on Venus, and took pictures that showed a clear atmosphere all the way to the horizon. Saturn may be like that. But Saturn has a diameter of 120,000 km, while Venus is 12,000 km wide. Imagine the view of a rocky core of Saturn that has 50,000 km of atmosphere above the lands. That is about 500 times thicker than the atmosphere of Earth. Airplanes could fly 30,000 miles above the core of Saturn looking down with an unobstructed view of the rocky surface.

When I use Celestia and fly through a planet, it looks blank. I am hoping that someday a motion picture will be made of this Saturn concept with a thick clear layer of atmosphere above a rocky core. One can elaborate on the spectacle. The lightning and plasmas would be colorful. The rocky surface could have extremely tall mountains due to the low gravity at the
surface of the rocky core. The closer one gets to the centar of a planet, the lower is the gravity. How much gravity would Saturn have at the surface of the rocky core when 46% of the mass is above and 54% of the mass is below the landing party? It may be like being on the Moon. The atmospheris density and viscosity mak be like water, giving bouyancy to tha rocks. Caverns of unexpected dimensions might exist. The temperature could be hospitable to fishlike beings at some altitude.

[eburacum45]

As you go deeper the density of the mostly hydrogen atmosphere will increase until it becomes liquid, then metallic;
see this speculative cross-section
http://www.mhhe.com/physsci/astronomy/a ... /0911.html

Somewhere between the bottom of the cloud layer and the top of the liquid layer the atmosphere will become so dense that light will not be able to penetrate more than a few kilometers. The central structure will be in darkness, almost certainly.

[Malenfant]

If there is a clear layer in the atmosphere of gas giants, it's very close to the cloud tops (ie within about 10-20 km of the top of the atmosphere). A clear layer like that - at least in certain areas on the planet - is not unlikely.

But as eburacum says, as you go deeper than that the atmosphere gets denser and denser (and hotter and hotter) and pressure increases til the hydrogen turns to liquid. Probably by the time you get to 100-200 km below the clouds it'd be pitch dark, lit only by lightning.

Plus the pressure at Jupiter and Saturn's core is enormous - several million atmospheres IIRC?

[Dollan]

Pressure's high enough to form a diamond core... if that theory is still valid, anyway.

...John...