LMR-060 · Planets
Saturn's Rings
100,000 km wide. About 20 meters thick. Mostly ice.
§ A first look
§ Depths
Six ways into the same idea — from bedtime story to chalkboard. No order required.
L1 · Crayon
Told like a bedtime story.
For a curious 10-year-old. No jargon. Just a picture in your head.
Saturn is a giant ball of gas way out in our solar system. Around its middle it wears a bright flat beautiful ring — actually a whole set of rings — that you can spot through a small telescope and feel briefly emotional about. From far away the rings look solid, but they aren't: they're made of trillions of bits of ice, from grains the size of dust to chunks the size of a house, all racing around Saturn in a flat disc. The whole ring system is wider than ten Earths in a row, but in most places only about ten metres thick — about as tall as a tree. The universe's most disproportionate piece of jewellery.
§ Strange but true
- 01They're 99.9% water ice — billions of pieces from dust to house-sized.
- 02They're shockingly thin. If Saturn were a basketball, the rings would be thinner than a sheet of paper.
- 03They're young. They probably formed in the time of the dinosaurs, and may vanish in 100 million years.
§ From the field journal
Saturn's Rings
"100,000 km wide. About 20 meters thick. Mostly ice."
— observed, sketched, not yet fully understood.
§ Nearby