Almost every time we have a look, Saturn seems to become even more incredible. Space rain falls from icy rings into the gas giant’s atmosphere. Two of its moons, Titan and Enceladus, are among the best candidates in our solar system for finding alien life.
The latest revelation? Saturn’s faint, outermost ring is an absolute monster, spanning an area of space roughly 7 thousand times larger than the gas giant itself.
“It’s fascinating that this ring can exist,” astronomer Douglas Hamilton, lead author of a newNature paper detailing the prodigious ring told Space.com. “We’re told in science that planetary rings are small and close to their parent planets — if they’re too far away from their planets, moons form rather than rings. This discovery just turns that idea on its head — the universe is a more interesting and surprising place than we thought.
via Gizmodo
Image: An artist’s depiction of Saturn’s outermost ring, via NASA / JPL / Space Sciences Institute
