Looking at the solar system, what
do you notice that is different between the terrestrial planets and the giant
planets besides their weights and sizes? That’s right, all the giants planets
have rings circling around them. Jupiter, Uranus, Saturn and Neptune, they all
have rings. These rings are magnificent and spectacular to look at if you have
a decent back yard telescope. They are made of different materials, have
different sizes, and color. Saturn’s rings stand out as the most magnificent
because of their large size and shape.
Back in 1610, Galileo was able to
discover the rings of Saturn using his newly invented telescope. He was the
first one to look at the Saturn’s rings but did not know what they were. He
called them ears of Saturn as the rings appeared to him as two smaller planets
on Saturn’s sides. The discovery had puzzled astronomers for a long time during
the time. The launches of NASA’s Voyage 1, Voyage 2 and the Cassini helped us
learned about these spectacular rings.
The rings of Saturn are actually a
ring system, which is about 1 kilometer in thickness and about 282000 km in
size. The ring system consists of billions of particles and the sizes range
from tiny dust particle to a km in diameter. The ring system has 5 major rings,
G, F, A, B, C, D with G being the farthest and D being the closest from the
Planet. The letter name is in the order of which the rings were discovered.
Each of these major rings also consists of individual, smaller rings, called ringlets.
The gap between ring A and B is called the Cassini Division, which is the
largest gap between the rings, about 4700 km. The main element that make up the
rings are pure water ice and dust.
We still do not know the origin of
these rings exactly. A theory is that these rings formed from the debris of
Saturn’s moon that was ripped apart by Saturn’s tidal force. Another theory is
that they form from the debris of a disruption of Saturn’s moons.
The A, B, C rings are called the main
rings as they are the largest in size and the most dense. B ring is the most
massive of all the rings. The D, G, F rings are fainter and dustier. They are
called dusty rings. D ring is the faintest and closest to Saturn.
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