|
Rings of Saturn
The rings of Saturn surround the planet at its equator. They do not touch Saturn. As Saturn orbits the sun, the rings always tilt at the same angle as the equator.
The seven rings of Saturn consist of thousands of narrow ringlets. The ringlets are made up of billions of pieces of ice. These pieces range from ice particles that are the size of dust to chunks of ice that measure more than 10 feet (3 meters) in diameter.
Saturn's major rings are extremely wide. The outermost ring, for example, may measure as much as 180,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) across. However, the rings of Saturn are so thin that they cannot be seen when they are in direct line with Earth. They vary in thickness from about 660 to 9,800 feet (200 to 3,000 meters). A space separates the rings from one another. Each of these gaps is about 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) or more in width. However, some of the gaps between the major rings contain ringlets.
|
|
|
The dark side of Saturn's rings was photographed by Voyager 1 as it flew by the side opposite the sun. The dense B-ring -- the reddish-brown band -- appears dark because it blocks much of the sunlight. It is the brightest ring when viewed from earth. Image credit: JPL
Saturn's rings were discovered in the early 1600's by the Italian astronomer Galileo. Galileo could not see the rings clearly with his small telescope, and thought they were large satellites. In 1656, after using a more powerful telescope, Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch astronomer, described a "thin, flat" ring around Saturn. Huygens thought the ring was a solid sheet of some material. In 1675, Giovanni Domenico Cassini, an Italian-born French astronomer, announced the discovery of two separate rings made up of swarms of satellites. Later observations of Saturn resulted in the discovery of more rings. The ringlets were discovered in 1980.
|
