The seven main rings are labeled in the order in which they were discovered. From the planet outward, they are D, C, B, A, F, G and E.
Adorned with thousands of beautiful ringlets, Saturn is unique among the planets. It is not the only planet to have rings – made of chunks of ice and rock – but none are as spectacular or as complicated as Saturn's.
Overview | Saturn Moons – NASA Solar System Exploration.
There are actually many rings—maybe 500 to 1000. There are also gaps in the rings. The Cassini spacecraft arrived at Saturn in July 2004. It orbited Saturn for 13 years, studying Saturn, its rings, and its moons much more thoroughly than the earlier spacecraft could.
No other planet in our solar system has rings as splendid as Saturn's.
More rings and ringlets could still be discovered. Saturn is much larger than Earth. More than 700 Earths could fit inside Saturn.
The researchers estimate that the rings will only be around another few hundred million years at most. Previous research has suggested that the rings may disappear within 100 million years.
Jupiter has the most moons of any planet in the Solar System.
Named GJ 504b, the planet is made of pink gas. It's similar to Jupiter, a giant gas planet in our own solar system. But GJ 504b is four times more massive. At 460°F, it's the temperature of a hot oven, and it's the planet's intense heat that causes it to glow.
You could think of it as kind of a super Saturn. Called J1407b, its ring system is 200 times larger than Saturn's.
If we could replace Saturn's rings with the rings around J1407b, they would be easily visible at night and be many times larger than the full moon.”
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest planet in our solar system. Like fellow gas giant Jupiter, Saturn is a massive ball made mostly of hydrogen and helium. Saturn is not the only planet to have rings, but none are as spectacular or as complex as Saturn's. Saturn also has dozens of moons.
Rings. Uranus has two sets of rings. The inner system of nine rings consists mostly of narrow, dark grey rings. There are two outer rings: the innermost one is reddish like dusty rings elsewhere in the solar system, and the outer ring is blue like Saturn's E ring.
Saturn is the second largest planet in our solar system.
The astronomers expect that J1407b's rings will become thinner in the next several million years and eventually disappear as satellites form from the material in the disks.
The Giant GRB Ring is a ring of 9 gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) that may be associated with one of the largest known cosmic structures.
It's not just the four gaseous planets of the solar system that have rings: the Chariklo minor planet, situated between Saturn and Uranus, is also ringed, and doubly so. It wasn't until 2013 that we discovered, by surprise, that this object had two narrow and dense rings, whose origin is still unknown.
Gas giants are also called failed stars because they contain the same basic elements as a star. Jupiter and Saturn are the gas giants of the Solar System.
In the 21st century, the Great Red Spot has been observed to be shrinking in size. At the start of 2004, its length was about half that of a century earlier, when it reached a size of 40,000 km (25,000 mi), about three times the diameter of Earth. At the present rate of reduction, it will become circular by 2040.
Will Mars ever have a ring? Sometime between 30 to 50 million years from now, Mars' gravity will break apart its closest moon Phobos. Its fragments will encircle the red planet as rings. Remarkably, this isn't the first time such an event would have transpired on Mars.
The rings of Saturn are the most extensive ring system of any planet in the Solar System. They consist of countless small particles, ranging in size from micrometers to meters, that orbit around Saturn.
10, 1846 – just 17 days after a Berlin observatory discovered Neptune. Scientists using powerful telescopes and spacecraft have since discovered a total of 14 moons orbiting the distant world.
Uranus's ring system was the second to be discovered in the Solar System, after that of Saturn. The rings were directly imaged when the Voyager 2 spacecraft flew through the Uranian system in 1986. Two more faint rings were revealed, bringing the total to eleven.