Although solid-looking in many images, Saturns rings are actually translucent. For centuries people have studied Saturns rings, but questions about the structure and composition of the rings lingered. It was only in 1857 when the physicist James Clerk Maxwell demonstrated that the rings must be composed of many small particles and not solid rings around the planet, and not until the 1970s that spectroscopic evidence definitively showed that the rings are composed mostly of water ice. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Posted on: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 07:12:04 +0000