where are saturn rings made of
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What are Saturn's rings made of? Although­ Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune have rings of their own, none are as spectacular as Saturn's. Saturn's rings are also one of the great mysteries in space. But as our spacecraft edge closer than ever to the rings, we're getting a more complete picture of what they're made of and how they came to exist. Saturn has six main rings, each composed of thousands of tiny ringlets. The rings are huge -- the biggest ones spanning 170,000 miles (273,588 km) in diameter. They are, however, proportionately very thin -- only about 650 feet (200 meters) thick. They aren't solid, as they appear from Earth, but are instead made up of floating chunks of water ice, rocks and dust that range in size from specks to enormous, house-sized pieces that orbit Saturn in a ring pattern.
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What Is Saturn Made Of? The rings of Saturn have been a fascination throughout time, glowing in the night sky. We now know that the rings are made up of both very small and extremely large pieces of ice and rock. When the sun reflects on the ice, it gives the rings a magical bright look. Saturn has a magnetic field that is 578 times that of the earth.
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- What are Saturn's rings made of? Saturn's rings are made of billions of pieces of ice, dust and rocks. Some of these particles are as small as a grain of salt, while others are as big as houses.
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Mystery of how Saturn's rings formed is solved: Rock and ice were repeatedly smashed together to create planetary wonder Stunning images sent back by the Cassini spacecraft has revealed how Saturn's icy moon, Enceladus, is slowly being eaten up by the gas giant's rings. The 310 mile (500km) wide moon, which astronomers say may harbour alien life, has a network of geysers pumping out tiny chunks of ice-water at 800mph (1287km/h).
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Saturn Like Jupiter, Saturn is made mostly of hydrogen and helium. Its volume is 755 times greater than that of Earth. Winds in the upper atmosphere reach 500 meters (1,600 feet) per second in the equatorial region.
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Saturn's Moons and Rings Saturn's Moons and Rings. The gas giant planet Saturn has a large group of 62 moons. It also has the largest, most complex, and best-known ring system in our Solar System. Saturn's moon Titan is one of the few moons in the Solar System with much of an atmosphere. It is also one of the largest moons in the Solar System. Some of Saturn's moons are odd. A giant crater on Mimas makes it look like the Death Star from the Star Wars movies. Iapetus is quite dark on one side and very bright on the other.
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- However, it is not the only planet with rings. Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune also have rings. Saturn is a favorite object for many observers. Its beautiful rings are 169,800 miles wide (approx 273,266 km). But the rings are amazingly thin, estimated to be less than a kilometer thick.
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- This is due to two reasons; 1) the magnetic field is less strong, therefore the magnetosphere is smaller, and 2) the rings of Saturn serve to damp out the charged particles that we saw associated with Jupiter's system.
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- Image Credit: NASA/JPL. The rings of Saturn have puzzled astronomers since Galileo Galilei discovered them with his telescope in 1610. Detailed study by the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft in the 1980s only increased the mystery. There are billions of ring particles in the entire ring system.
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Saturn's Atmosphere: All the Way Down Atmospheric makeup. Saturn is made up predominantly of hydrogen, which it captured in the early stages of its formation. Most of the remaining composition is helium. Other elements, such as methane and ammonia, are found in small doses. Nitrogen and oxygen also mix within the atmosphere.
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Do other planets aside from Saturn have rings? The other planets in the Solar System that have rings are Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune. Jupiter's rings are made up of dust that gets thrown into orbit around the planet when a meteor hits one of Jupiter's moons. The rings were discovered by the Galileo space probe when it passed by in 2002. Uranus' rings are made up of chunks of rock that most likely came from stray moons that got too close to the planet, and were crushed by the planet's gravity. The planet has 13 distinct rings that are only a few kilometres thick.
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This Super-Saturn Alien Planet Might Be the New 'Lord of the Rings' Rings might be ancient, having formed with the planet itself. Or they might be relatively new, created from the debris of objects that fell toward the planet. Or maybe they form and then quickly disintegrate into moons. [ See amazing photos of Saturn's rings ]. Exoring model for J1407b from Matthew Kenworthy on Vimeo.
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Looking for water . . . everywhere! When you get away from Earth, though, the ice becomes so hard that it is like a rock. So, unlike Earth, this ice contains no liquid water. The rings of Saturn are made up of rock-hard ice particles that have gathered around the planet. Comet Hale-Bopp visited Earth's skies in April 1997.
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The ring system Extending from 128 to 207 Saturn radii, far beyond the other rings, is the outermost, a vast, tenuous ring of dust shed from impacts on the moon Phoebe. It is the largest planetary ring in the solar system. The Spitzer Space Telescope discovered this ring; its observations showed an optical depth of 2 × 10−8.
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Ring system The moons Prometheus (right) and Pandora orbit just inside and outside the F ring of Saturn, but only Prometheus is thought to function as a ring shepherd. A ring system is a disc or ring orbiting an astronomical object that is composed of solid material such as dust and moonlets, and is a common component of satellite systems around giant planets. A ring system around a planet is also known as a planetary ring system. The most prominent and most famous planetary rings in the Solar System are those around Saturn, but the other three giant planets also have ring systems. Recent evidence suggests that ring systems may also be found around other types
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Ask Smithsonian: How Many Rings Does Saturn Have? In this simulated image of Saturn's rings, color indicates ring particle sizes in different regions based on the measured effects of three radio signals. Three simultaneous radio signals of 0.94, 3.6 and 13 centimeter wavelength (Ka-, X-and S-bands) were sent from the Cassini spacecraft through the rings to Earth.
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What are Saturn's rings made of? They're not in alphabetical order, but are instead in the order in which they were discovered (the actual order, starting from Saturn, is -- D, C, B, A, F, G and E). A and B are the two brightest rings, and B is the widest and thickest of the six rings.
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Saturnâs Rings If you have rock-steady sky and a 6-inch scope, look for the elusive Encke division, another gap near the outer edge of the A-ring. More than most planets, Saturn displays a striking 3-D effect caused by the darkened edges of the disk and, when you can see them, the shadows cast by the rings on the planet. The view of the rings as seen from Earth changes over Saturn’s nearly 30-year orbital period.
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Why does Saturn have rings? Four robotic spacecraft from Earth have visited Saturn—Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, Voyager 2, and Cassini. They have revealed many surprising things about Saturn's rings. The small color differences in Saturn's rings have been enhanced in this picture from Voyager 2 data. Over 60 bright and dark ringlets show up in this color enhanced image from Voyager 2 data. The rings are about 400,000 kilometers (240,000 miles) wide.
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Rings of Saturn Robert Hooke was another early observer of the rings of Saturn, and noted the casting of shadows on the rings. In 1675, Giovanni Domenico Cassini determined that Saturn's ring was composed of multiple smaller rings with gaps between them; the largest of these gaps was later named the Cassini Division.
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What Are They, and Where Are They? What Are They, and Where Are They? Cloud Altitudes in Jovian Planet Atmospheres. The atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn are made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, although there is some evidence they contain hydrogen compounds. Uranus and Neptune are made primarily of hydrogen compounds, with smaller traces of hydrogen, helium, metal and rock. The most common hydrogen compounds are methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3), and water (H2O). The farther away a planet is from the Sun, the cooler its atmosphere will be.
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Rings of Saturn Formation of main rings. Saturn's rings may be very old, dating to the formation of Saturn itself. There are two main theories regarding the origin of Saturn's inner rings.
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Facts About the Planet Saturn 1 The other planets that are classed as gas giants are Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus. 2  Saturn is the second largest planet in our solar system. 3  The rings of Saturn are made of chunks of rock and ice. 4  If you was driving at 75 miles (121 km) per hour, it would take 258 days to drive around one of Saturn’s rings.
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- The second largest planet in the solar system, Saturn is a gas giant composed primarily of hydrogen and helium. But it's best known for the bright, beautiful rings that circle its equator.
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- The Width of Saturn’s Rings The rings of Saturn are composed of billions of icy particles ranging in size from tiny grains to kilometres across. There are 14 major divisions in... Neptune Facts Neptune is the eighth planet from the Sun making it the most distant in the solar system.
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What are Saturn's rings made of? The E ring has been most puzzling to scientists, because unlike the other rings, which are believed to be made up of particles shed from nearby moons, E is thought to be made up of ice particles sprayed out of volcanic geysers near the south pole of the moon Enceladus.