Astronomy: The Rings of Saturn

Running head: ASTRONOMY 1
Astronomy: The Rings of Saturn
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ASTRONOMY 2
The Rings of Saturn
The rings of Saturn are the most widespread ring structure in all the planets in the solar
system (Micek, 2019). These rings comprises uncountable small particles in small sizes ranging
from micrometers to meters orbiting around Saturn. The ring elements comprises exclusively
water ice as well as trace elements of rocky material. However, up to date there is still no
consensus regarding their formation mechanism. Even though there exists theoretical models
suggesting that the rings could have been formed before the history of the solar system. While
the reflection from the rings intensifies the brightness of Saturn, this brilliance is not discernable
from Earth without aided visualization. In this sense, in 1610, Galileo Galilei was the first
individual to perceive Saturn’s rings using a telescope; nevertheless, he could not clearly
perceive them to discern their real nature (Zhang, 2017). Consequently, in 1655, Christiaan
Huygens happened to the earliest individual to describe these rings as a disk around Saturn.
There are various theories associated with how Saturn’s rings came into existence. It is
believed that Saturn got its rings through a violent origin, when the planet merged at the origin of
the solar system approximately 4 billion years ago. These rings were formed as a result of the
swirling disk of gas surrounding it in addition to other moons similar to the scope of Titan. Titan
is Saturn’s vast existing satellite that is nearly 50% greater than the Earth’s moon. However,
because of gravitational pull with the gas it resulted in the moons’ orbit to contract.
Consequently, due to the shrinking the satellites come into death ringlets and charged into the
planet. Prior to every moon colliding, intense tidal forces generated by the gravitational pull by
Saturn overextended and constricted, shedding off most of its ice. Successive moon
gravitationally seized this ice, nonetheless, it was finally pushed and constricted till they too shed
off their ice and charged into Saturn. According to Ciarniello et al. (2019) the present day

ASTRONOMY 3
Saturn’s ring system is a remnant of the last moon to fall victim of Saturn’s massive gravitational
pull. Basically, the moon used to be a huge ice ball with a stony middle. Soon after the ice-rich
surface was shed off in gigantic masses, the rocky center vanished below the Saturnian gasses
(Castillo-Rogez, Hemingway, Rhoden, Tobie, & McKinnon, 2018). The remains of the final
ruined moon, each initially between one and fifty kilometers transversely, made an icy ring
system approximately a thousand times bigger compared to the present rings. In the successive
four billion years, countless smashes between these huge masses produced extremely reduced
ring elements currently circumnavigating Saturn. Therefore, the tiny rocky materials that
presently occur in the ring system is likely the fragments of impacts between icy ring elements
and asteroids as well as comets swept up by the massive gravitational pull of the planet.
On the other hand, other scientists believe that passing asteroids or comets were snagged
by the gravitational pull of the planet, which broke up before reaching it (Dubinski, 2019).
Another theory is that the rings of Saturn were at one point huge moons that spiraled into the
planet. Saturn has more than 60 moons and only one Titan is huge; the remaining are small.
Statistics reveals that nearly thirteen of Saturn’s moons are bigger than fifty kilometers. As a
result, the gravitational pull of these moons influences the structure of Saturn’s rings and give
insight into likely formation approaches.
Composition and Structure of the Rings of Saturn
Reports show that Saturn’s rings consists of billions of particles ranging from grains to
mountain-size chunks (Zhang et al., 2017). Saturn’s rings primarily consists of water-ice and
also draw in rocky meteoroids as they travel through space.
Major physical properties of the rings of Saturn