Saturn’s rings

Day 246 / 365

Saturn might be the most unique planet in our system appearance-wise. Well, next to the Earth obviously. And this is thanks to its rings. Actually it’s not the only planet with rings. All of the giant planets of our solar system — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, have rings. But Saturn’s rings are the most extensive ones out of all of them.

Theses rings are basically a band of particles, as small as a few millimeters and as big as a meter, orbiting around Saturn. These are made almost entirely of ice. These rings can’t be seen from a naked eye from the earth but can be easily seen through a telescope. In fact, Galilio was the first person to see these rings, and that was back in 1610! He described the rings as “Saturn’s ears”.

It was earlier thought that these rings are very old, almost as old as Saturn itself. But recent data from the space probe Cassini indicates that these rings might be much younger, formed within the last 100 million years. That might seem like a lot of time to us, but it’s small when you look at it at a universal scale. Think of it this way, if a dinosaur could have possibly invented a telescope and pointed it to Saturn, he would not have seen these beautiful rings we see today!

This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — The Rotating Door