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Saturn’s rings are disappearing — they may soon be gone!
If the Solar System held a Miss Solar System contest for the most beautiful planet, it’s safe to assume that Saturn would win every year. While the planet itself is relatively boring, its vast system of fascinating rings is something absolutely unique. Let’s enjoy them while they exist.
Saturn’s rings were first spotted by Galileo Galilei in 1610. Originally seeing only the dim shape of the planet (after all, it was then that Galileo created the first telescope) the discoverer thought he saw two large objects next to Saturn. However, when he looked at Saturn some time later, he saw nothing, so he decided that he was obviously imagining things. As it happened, at that time the rings were positioned with their edge towards the Earth, so they were not visible.
Why. Saturn’s rings are extremely large, with diameters as large as 250,000 kilometers. At the same time, they are incredibly thin. They are only 10 meters (33 feet) thick vertically. So when the rings are positioned edge-on toward us, they’re completely invisible. We can only observe them when their plane is tilted toward us again. The rings were first correctly identified and described by Christiaan Huygens in 1658.
