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Saturn: Rings
There are thousands of rings made up of billions
of particles of ice and rock. The particles range in size from a grain of sugar to the size of a house. The rings are believed
to be pieces of comets, asteroids or shattered moons that broke up before they reached the planet.
Each ring orbits at a different speed around the planet.
While the other three gas planets in the solar system
- Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune - have rings orbiting around them, Saturn's are by far
the largest and most spectacular. With a thickness of about 1 kilometer (3,200 feet) or less, they span up to 282,000 km (175,000
miles), about three quarters of the distance between the Earth and its moon.
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