Rings of Neptune 1846 when William Lassell, the discoverer of Neptune's largest moon, Triton, thought he had seen a ring around the planet. However, his claim was never confirmed and it is likely that it was an observational artifact. The first reliable detection of a ring was made in 1968 by stellar occultation, although that result would go unnoticed until 1977 when the rings of Uranus were discovered. Soon after the Uranus discovery, a team from Villanova University led by Harold J. Reitsema began searching for rings around Neptune. On 24 May 1981, they detected a dip in a star's brightness during one
Formation and evolution of the Solar System planet, with abrasion by meteorites and Saturn's gravity eventually taking the rest, leaving Saturn unadorned. However, data from the "Cassini" mission led scientists to revise that early view. Observations revealed 10 km-wide icy clumps of material that repeatedly break apart and reform, keeping the rings fresh. Saturn's rings are far more massive than the rings of the other giant planets. This large mass is thought to have preserved Saturn's rings since it first formed 4.5 billion years ago, and is likely to preserve them for billions of years to come. In the long term, the greatest changes in the Solar