Saturn's Rings Will Disappear Tomorrow

A magical thing happened to me when I was 8 or 9. My father had a little 2 1/2 inch refractor that I took out to the back yard of our house on Long Island. I pointed it at lights in the night sky and had a good enough time with focusing the stars and watching them move and marveled at the color display of stars closer to the horizon that twinkled in the denser air.

But then I stumbled on Saturn and saw the rings and I was changed forever.


Saturn's rings to disappear Tuesday - Every 15 years, the rings turn edge-on to sun and reflect almost no sunlight

since Saturn's axis is tilted as it orbits the sun, Saturn has seasons, like those of planet Earth. The Hubble Space Telescope took the above sequence of images about a year apart. starting on the left in 1996, just after the last time the rings were edge-on, and ending on the right in 2000 when the rings had opened up significantly from our point of view

"Saturn's rings, loaded with ice and mud, boulders and tiny moons, is 170,000 miles wide. But the shimmering setup is only about 30 feet thick. The rings harbor 35 trillion-trillion tons of ice, dust and rock, scientists estimate.

The rings shine because they reflect sunlight. But every 15 years, the rings turn edge-on to the sun and reflect almost no sunlight."