The Rings 

Saturn is known by its extraordinary ring system, the largest and most impressive in the solar system. The rings span a diameter of over 250,000 kilometers but are also very thin, no more than about 1.5 meters across. The two most prominent rings are called the A and B rings, being the most bright, and the fainter C ring, all of which can be seen from Earth. The system also has many gaps in between the major rings, a few of which were observed during early astronomers.

The gap between the A and B rings was discovered by Giovanni Cassini in 1675 and was thus named the Cassini Division. The Encke Division is the much fainter gap between the A ring, discovered by Johann Encke in 1837. Besides the brightest rings and most prominent gaps, Saturn also has four additional rings, all discovered by the Voyager. Images indicate that the main rings on Saturn are composed of many smaller rings. Another interesting fact is that Saturn's rings are the brightest in the solar system, with an albedo of 0.2 to 0.6.

The outermost ring, called the F-ring, is made up a complex system of smaller rings with bright large clumps. These clumps are known as knots, probably large chunks of ring material or even mini-moons.

The rings of Saturn are made up of primarily water ice, with particles or rock. When examined closely, it can be seen that the smooth and continuous ring is broken up into numerous tiny particles, each in an independent orbit.

The general size range for such particles is a few centimeters to several meters. The interesting thing is that if all the matter of the rings were compressed into one body, it would not be more than 50 kilometers in diameter. Although the origin of the material that make up the rings is still unknown, a possibility is that it was from larger moons, broken up by numerous collisions with comets and asteroids.

The structure of the rings is the result of gravitational effects of the shepherd satellites.