Saturn's Largest Ring

This artist's conception shows a nearly invisible ring around Saturn -- the largest of the giant planet's many rings. It was discovered by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The ring is so diffuse that it reflects little sunlight, or visible light that we see with our eyes. But its dusty particles shine with infrared light, or heat radiation, that Spitzer can see.

The artist's conception simulates an infrared view of the giant ring. Saturn appears as just a small dot from outside the band of ice and dust. The bulk of the ring material starts about six million kilometers (3.7 million miles) away from the planet and extends outward roughly another 12 million kilometers (7.4 million miles). The ring's diameter is equivalent to roughly 300 Saturns lined up side to side.

The inset shows an enlarged image of Saturn, as seen by the W.M. Keck Observatory at Mauna Kea, Hawaii, in infrared light. The ring, stars and wispy clouds are an artist's representation.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This video showcases the Saturnian system, beginning with the planet itself and panning out to its newest addition -- an enormous ring discovered in infrared light by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Click on the image for the movie.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This artist's conception shows a nearly invisible ring around Saturn — the largest of the giant planet's many rings. It was discovered by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The ring is huge, and far from the gas planet and the rest of its majestic rings.

The bulk of the ring material starts about six million kilometers (3.7 million miles) away from the planet and extends outward roughly another 12 million kilometers (7.4 million miles). The diameter of the ring is equivalent to 300 Saturns lined up side to side. The ring is thick too -- it's about 20 times as thick as the diameter of the planet. In fact, the entire volume of the ring is big enough to hold one billion Earths!

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

This picture highlights a slice of Saturn's largest ring. The ring (the red band in the below figure) was discovered by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which detected infrared light, or heat, from the dusty ring material. Spitzer viewed the ring edge-on from its Earth-trailing orbit around the sun.

The ring has a diameter equivalent to 300 Saturns lined up side to side. And it's thick too -- about 20 Saturns could fit into its vertical height. The ring is tilted about 27 degrees from Saturn's main ring plane.

The Spitzer data were taken by its multiband imaging photometer and show infrared light with a wavelength of 24 microns.

The picture of Saturn was taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

Spitzer image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Virginia
Hubble image credit: NASA/ESA/STScI/AURA