• Question: is there only one ring on Saturn

    Asked by anon-246733 to Dave on 10 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Dave Constable

      Dave Constable answered on 10 Mar 2020:


      There are actually lots of rings of Saturn, separated by gaps between them. There are 4 “main rings”, and lots of smaller rings within those. These smaller rings are called “ringlets”. The rings are mostly made from bits of water ice. When the Cassini spacecraft arrived at Saturn in 2004, we got lots of really cool pictures of Saturn’s ring system. These pictures allowed us to see that there were some small moons within some of the gaps in the rings.

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