- published: 07 Oct 2014
- views: 996861
The rings of Saturn are the most extensive planetary ring system of any planet in the Solar System. They consist of countless small particles, ranging in size from micrometres to metres, that orbit about Saturn. The ring particles are made almost entirely of water ice, with a trace component of rocky material. There is still no consensus as to their mechanism of formation; some features of the rings suggest a relatively recent origin, but theoretical models indicate they are likely to have formed early in the Solar System's history.
Although reflection from the rings increases Saturn's brightness, they are not visible from Earth with unaided vision. In 1610, the year after Galileo Galilei first turned a telescope to the sky, he became the very first person to observe Saturn's rings, though he could not see them well enough to discern their true nature. In 1655, Christiaan Huygens was the first person to describe them as a disk surrounding Saturn. Although many people think of Saturn's rings as being made up of a series of tiny ringlets (a concept that goes back to Laplace), true gaps are few. It is more correct to think of the rings as an annular disk with concentric local maxima and minima in density and brightness. On the scale of the clumps within the rings there is much empty space.
I searched for her love
Across the vast black space unknown
Where she stops, heaven knows
Here she comes, there she goes
Through a crack in the sky
A wormhole, she's inside
Aged my heart a billion years
But in a sense it's only tears
And nothing matters
On the rings of Saturn
But she never did come home
And my holograms grew cold
Forever lost in a sea of stars
And I can't distinguish the Earth from Mars
In the heavens above
I search for meteor love
She was nowhere to be found
But in this craft I'm going down
Black out the planets
On the rings of Saturn
My heart goes out to her
I'll wait right here
I'll wait right here for her
Someday she will return for me
And I'll give her the ring
Detached from the mothership
I've searched the solar system
Through that crack with no name
She's gone but her beauty remains
In the stars above
I'll wait right there because
She's the one I love the most
For her I threw the cosmos
On her fingers