Home > News > Spitzer Discovers Super-sized Ring Around Saturn > Comments

Spitzer Discovers Super-sized Ring Around Saturn Posted by Guy Pirro on 10/7/2009 4:47 PM NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered an enormous donut-shaped ring around Saturn -- by far the largest of the giant planet's many rings. The new belt lies at the far reaches of the Saturnian system, with an orbit tilted 27 degrees from the main ring plane. The bulk of its 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). One of Saturn's farthest moons, Phoebe, circles within the newfound ring, and is likely the source of its material. Saturn's newest ring is thick, too -- its more like a donut with a vertical height of about 20 times the diameter of the planet. It would take about one billion Earths stacked together to fill this giant donut. | Read full story |

Comments:

You must be logged in to view the news comments

Click here to log in or Register a new account