Saturn is known as the most imposing planet for its magnificent rings, although it is not the only planet that has rings; Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune have rings too, but not as big and bright. Saturn’s spectacular golden arrays, which reflect the sunlight, must have taken Galileo’s breath away when he first spotted them through a telescope in 1610, more than 400 years ago!
In 1675, astronomer Jean–Dominique Cassini discovered a “division” between what are now called the A and B rings. It is now known that the gravitational influence of Saturn’s moon Mimas is responsible for the Cassini Division, which is 4800 kilometers wide. Astronomers have since been trying to learn more about Saturn’s rings; yet, when or how they were formed remains a mystery.
Source: Encyclopedia of Science
What astronomers agree on is that the rings are made of billions of particles of ice and rocks, ranging in size from the size of a sugar grain to the size of a house. It is believed that the rings might have something to do with Saturn’s many moons.
As impressive as it may seem, 59 moons have been identified so far orbiting Saturn, and there are two theories about the planet rings’ formation. The first states that the rings may have been debris left over from the occasional crash of asteroids and meteoroids into Saturn’s moons breaking them into pieces. The other theory states that these rings might have been formed from material left over from Saturn’s first formation.
Most of Saturn’s moons are relatively small; yet, they include Titan, the second largest moon of the solar system, which happens to be bigger than Mercury, Eris, and Pluto. It looks like a star using small telescopes, while it appears as a disc using larger ones. Titan has a strange cloud, which appears out of nowhere and was formed from a process similar to that of the ozone layer at Earth’s Poles. This strange cloud is made of dicyanoacetylene; one of many hydrocarbons that give Titan an atmosphere of orange–brown hue.
Image by Freepik
The stray of rings is, so far, known to consist of seven large rings named alphabetically in the order they were discovered. For instance, the first ring to be seen was given the name A, having nothing to do with being the closest or the farthest from Saturn. The central one is the very faint D ring, while the farthest from the center, revealed in 2009, could fit a billion Earths. Saturn’s F ring, has a curious braided appearance; it is composed of many narrow rings, bends, kinks, and bright clumps on them, which can give the illusion that these strands are braided.
Mysterious spokes have been detected in Saturn’s rings, which might form and scatter in few hours; it is presumed that these spokes might have been formed due to Saturn’s magnetic field. Though Saturn’s magnetic field is not as huge as Jupiter’s, it is still 578 times as powerful as Earth’s, capturing any small pieces of icy dust with an electric charge, letting them float above the rings in straight marks tracing lines in the magnetic field.
Thanks to Voyagers 1 and 2, and the Cassini–Huygens spacecraft sponsored by NASA in 2005 for four years to study the planet, its moons, rings, and magnetosphere, by descending through Titan’s atmosphere and surface orbiting around it 70 times, we would not have known so much about Saturn. Who knows what will be discovered later about this fascinating planet, which keeps intrigued and amazed by how precise this world was created!
References
nasa.gov
science.nationalgeographic.com
scientificamerican.com
space.com
wikipedia.org