Saturn: The Lord of The Rings

Hubble’s observation of Saturn in 2021

Growing up, I was mesmerized by Saturn's seemingly perfect symmetrical rings. It made me wonder why none of the other planets had rings. What makes Saturn special?

It turns out that other gas giants –Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune–all have rings too; they're just not as noticeable. And here's why.

Jupiter has rings that are very faint because it's composed mostly of small, dark particles from meteroid impacts that are hard to see except when lit by the Sun. Even then, the rings are so thin that they are invisible from Earth.

Uranus has 13 known rings of which 11 were visible in the image captured by NASA's James Webb Telescope (JWT). Nine were classified as the main rings, while two are the less visible dusty rings. Uranus's rings, much like Jupiter's, is not easily visible because they are made of dark and dusty material.

Neptune's rings, which are very faint, requires a powerful telescope to capture its image. In Webb's latest images of Neptune, it was able to capture several bright, narrow rings, and clearly shows Neptune’s fainter dust bands. Neptune's rings, which are made mostly of dust and small rocks and coated with dark material, are almost invisible except in powerful telescopes.

So, finally, we come to Saturn. Saturn's rings are made up of mostly water ice and the size of the particles that make up the ring can be as small as a grain of sand to as large as mountains. Cassini, a joint space-research mission by NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency, identified features in Saturn's rings called "spokes" which can be longer than the diameter of Earth. Although Saturn's rings may have formed from the breakup of Saturn's moons, or from comets or meteors, because of its mostly water ice composition, the sunlight reflects extremely well and therefore makes them shine brilliantly.

Unlike Saturn's rings, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune all have rings but are invisible from Earth without a powerful telescope. Saturn, then, deserves the title Lord of the Rings.