With shimmering pinks, hues of gray and a hint of brown, a newly released image of Saturn's rings resembles a fresco where nature is the painter. The Cassini spacecraft captured this exquisite natural color view a few days before entering orbit around Saturn.
No other planet in our solar system has rings as splendid as Saturn's. They are so expansive and bright that they were discovered as soon as humans began pointing telescopes at the night sky.
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.
From far away, Saturn looks like it has seven large rings. Each large ring is named for a letter of the alphabet. The rings were named in the order they were discovered.
The planets of the solar system are varied in their appearance. Mercury is slate gray while Venus is pearly white, Earth a vibrant blue, and Mars a dusky red. Even the gas giants are different, Neptune and Uranus an opaque blue, while Jupiter and Saturn are mostly beige with brilliant red-brown belts.
Alt text: Pluto is shown in a rainbow of colors that distinguish the different regions on the planet. The left side of the planet is mostly blue-green with purple swirls, while the right side ranges from a vibrant yellow-green at the top to a reddish orange toward the bottom.
Newly discovered? A purple planet! Actually, the color suggestion is just speculation based on the planet's expected chemical composition. The planet, called WASP-104b, orbits 4 million km from its yellow dwarf parent star every 1.75 days.
Saturn's atmosphere has winds which can blow at over 1800 kilometers per hour! The white spots on Saturn are believed to be powerful storms. Saturn is surrounded by over 1000 rings made of ice and dust. Some of the rings are very thin and some are very thick.
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.
The seventh planet from the Sun with the third largest diameter in our solar system, Uranus is very cold and windy. The ice giant is surrounded by 13 faint rings and 27 small moons as it rotates at a nearly 90-degree angle from the plane of its orbit.
Saturn's rings appear golden as the planet's shadow drapes across nearly the whole span of the rings.
Saturn. Saturn's rings are the most extensive ring system of any planet in the Solar System, and thus have been known to exist for quite some time. Galileo Galilei first observed them in 1610, but they were not accurately described as a disk around Saturn until Christiaan Huygens did so in 1655.
The outermost ring of the planet Uranus turns out to have a bright blue color, according to a report in the April 7 issue of the journal Science.
Jupiter's faint rings are likely from meteor bombardment of its moons, sending material into space. However, other stronger ring systems have numerous plausible origins. It's possible they come from material leftover from the formation of our solar system, captured by the planets.
Physical characteristics. Uranus is blue-green in color, as a result of the methane in its mostly hydrogen-helium atmosphere. The planet is often dubbed an ice giant, since at least 80% of its mass is a fluid mix of water, methane and ammonia ice.
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. The ring particles are made almost entirely of water ice, with a trace component of rocky material.
Saturn's rings are disappearing, and we don't know how much longer they will be around. Astronomers have known since the 1980s that Saturn's icy innermost rings are steadily eroding onto its upper atmosphere.
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.
Saturn's moons range in size from larger than the planet Mercury – the giant moon Titan – to as small as a sports arena. The moons shape, contribute to, and also collect material from Saturn's rings and magnetosphere.
Any pieces of space rock traveling at a certain speed could flat out obliterate any equipment, which would definitely be a problem for any manned missions beyond our own back door. In short, if Earth had rings, life would probably still exist, but not life as we know it.
Meet J1407b – an exoplanet 20 times more massive than Saturn. The rings of this Super Saturn span 180 million kilometers wide. That's larger than the Earth-Sun distance of 150 million kilometers and 200 times bigger than Saturn's rings! Make no mistake, J1407b is the true Lord of the Rings.
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.
Objects that reflect no sunlight are black. Consequently, HD 149026b might be the blackest known planet in the Universe, in addition to the hottest. The temperature of this dark and balmy planet was taken with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
Neptune: The Blue Planet | NASA.