SOLAR SYSTEM

Detailed explanation-1: -Saturn isn’t the only planet to have rings, but it definitely has the most beautiful ones. The rings we see are made of groups of tiny ringlets that surround Saturn. They’re made of chunks of ice and rock. Like Jupiter, Saturn is mostly a ball of hydrogen and helium.

Detailed explanation-2: -Saturn is a funny-looking planet. True, it’s not the only planet with rings. Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune have rings, too. But Saturn’s rings are the biggest and brightest.

Detailed explanation-3: -The main rings are A, B and C. The outermost ring, easily seen with Earth-based telescopes, is the A ring. The Cassini Division is the largest gap in the rings and separates the B ring from the A ring. Just outside the A ring is the narrow F ring, shepherded by tiny moons, Pandora and Prometheus.

Detailed explanation-4: -Chariklo. 10199 Chariklo, a centaur, was the first minor planet discovered to have rings. It has two rings, perhaps due to a collision that caused a chain of debris to orbit it.

Detailed explanation-5: -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.

Detailed explanation-6: -Saturn’s ring system is the most extensive and complex in our solar system; it extends hundreds of thousands of kilometers from the planet. In fact, Saturn and its rings would just fit in the distance between Earth and the Moon.

Detailed explanation-7: -Militzer, UC Berkeley professor of earth and planetary science, was part of a team that in 2019 concluded that the rings of Saturn are relatively recent, having formed a mere 100 million years ago and perhaps even more recently. The planet itself is as old as the solar system, about 4.5 billion years.