Hailed as the “showstopper” of our solar system, the planet Saturn is subject of Saturn: Lord of the Rings, part 8 in the 13-episode History Channel series The Universe. In this hour-long installment, we get the facts about the sixth planet from the Sun, its numerous Moons, and the attribute its best known for — its mysterious rings.

The episode starts off with a bombardment of statistics on the 4.5 billion-year-old planet: it’s the 2nd largest planet in our solar system, 750 times the size of Earth, and takes 29.5 years to orbit the Sun; it has 48 known Moons, which have smaller “shepherd moons”; and it has 7 known ring regions.

But there’s more to Saturn — named so after the Roman god of the agriculture — than meets the eye. While it looks beautiful from afar, the planet is subject to long-term violent weather, including polar storms that are larger than the entire United States. There’s a region of the planet so harsh it’s been dubbed “Storm Alley” and there’s also a hurricane-like hexagon-shaped feature that lies above Saturn’s north pole that has an Eye Wall, which so far has only been discovered in terrestrial storms.

And those beautiful rings? How they were formed and if they will one day vanish is debated, but one thing’s for sure: don’t try flying a spacecraft through them, because they’re swarmed with billions of pieces of icy pulverized particles. How these particles interact with Saturn’s numerous Moons is just part of what you’ll learn from this episode, which contains computer graphics simulations as well as footage provided by Cassini-Huygen spacecraft.

Another subject for debate: Saturn’s Moons. Covered here specifically is the planet’s largest moon Titan as well as one of its smaller moons Enceladus, both of which could provide answers to the biggest question humans have asked: Are we alone?

The Universe series episodes air on Tuesday at 9pm on the History Channel through September 4, 2007, and will be available on DVD October 30, 2007.