Spectacular Saturn:Images from the Cassini-Huygens Mission

Part II: Ringed World

A virtual exhibit based on exhibitions at the American Museum of Natural History and the Cornell University

Johnson Museum of Art

Ringed World Saturn’s dazzling rings are made mainly of ice, in

chunks that range in size from marbles to school buses. Small amounts of rock and other material mixed in give them the pastel hues photographed by Cassini. This blend of particles orbits Saturn in a disk that is as spectacularly thin as it is wide. Edge-to-edge, Saturn’s rings stretch some 270,000 kilometers (165,000 miles)—two-thirds the distance from Earth to the moon. Yet in most places they are only about ten meters (about 30 feet) thick.

Ringed World

As Saturn’s rings whirl in formation around the planet, the particles gently jostle and bump each other, forming clumps in some places and thinning out in others. Moons drive ripples and waves across the rings with their gravity. Ever changing, the dynamics of this disk provide scientists with a model for understanding other spinning systems, like galaxies, the disks of material falling into black holes and quasars and even our early solar system.

Panoramic Rings

Expanse of Ice: Ring Names

Glint of Sun: Rainbow on the Rings

Inner Circle:Saturn’s D Ring

Bands of Brightness: Outer C Ring Detail

No Vacancy: The Cassini Division

A Light Beyond: Light From a Flickering Star

Mind the Gap: Daphnis

Crash Scene: Dark Channels Created by Prometheus

Predictable Pattern: Rings Full of Waves

Making Waves

Continued in Part III: Moons of Saturn