Saturn’s Famous Rings Will Disappear From View This Weekend

Saturn will temporarily lose its iconic look from our viewpoint on Earth, appearing as a pale, yellow sphere without its swirling rings shrouding the gas giant. The billions of rocky and icy chunks swirling around Saturn will disappear from our viewpoint on Sunday, March 23 as the thin edges of the planet’s rings are aimed toward Earth, seemingly vanishing from sight. The rare phenomenon occurs every 13 to 15 years, with Earth passing through Saturn’s ring plane. The last time Earth got this rare view of the gas giant was in 2009. Saturn is surrounded by billions of swarming pieces of comets, asteroids, and broken-off fragments of moons that were caught by the planet’s orbit. The exquisite ring system extends up to 175,000 miles (282,000 kilometers) from the planet, and is made up of tiny, dust-sized icy grains to chunks as big as a house, according to NASA. Similarly to Earth, Saturn’s axis is tilted by 26.73 degrees. As it orbits the Sun, Saturn’s tilt shifts in relation to Earth, ... Read full article.