Saturn Is ‘Losing’ Its Rings This Month — This Is Why And When We Can Expect To See Them Again
Listen, we know this has already been a disorientating year so far, but Saturn is about to lose its iconic rings. Well, sort of.
Saturn’s rings will be impossible to see from Earth as of March 23rd, according to Forbes.
This is because our view of the planet “waxes and wanes” as Saturn orbits the sun every 29 years.
Saturn’s axis is, according to NASA, tilted by 26.7 degrees with respect to its orbit around the sun – and Forbes suggests “its tilt merely means that the rings appear to open and close, as seen from Earth”.
The view is currently narrowing and from the 23rd March, the rings will be precisely tilted edge-on to Earth, making it impossible to view them.
We’re not losing them forever, thankfully. Though, back in 2018, NASA did reveal the rings are slowly being pulled in by gravity and will actually, eventually, disappear.
When will we be able to see Saturn’s rings again?
Speaking to Discover Magazine, Jonti Horner, astrobiologist and astronomer at the University of Southern Queensland, said: “If you want to see the rings, now’s your chance, because they’re going away… but they will be back.”
It will take a while, though.
After this month, it will be around seven years until we can see the rings in all their splendour again, according to BBC Newsround.
Why does Saturn have rings and what are they made of?
On its website, NASA explains: “Saturn’s rings are thought to be pieces of comets, asteroids, or shattered moons that broke up before they reached the planet, torn apart by Saturn’s powerful gravity.”
These rings are made up of billions of small chunks of ice and rock, coated with other materials such as dust.
NASA explains: “The ring particles mostly range from tiny, dust-sized icy grains to chunks as big as a house. A few particles are as large as mountains.
“The rings would look mostly white if you looked at them from the cloud tops of Saturn, and interestingly, each ring orbits at a different speed around the planet.”
