Saturn’s rings will be practically invisible from Earth in 2025, NASA confirmed. But it doesn’t mean that the planet will lose its amazing rings, but rather that they will become aligned or “edge-on” due to rotation on its axis, making them essentially invisible from Earth. The last time something like this happened was in 2009.
This phenomenon occurs approximately every 13 to 15 years, because the planet rotates on an inclined axis of 26.7 degrees. Vahe Peroomian, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Southern California, explained in an interview with CBS News that when Saturn’s rings are seen edge-on “they reflect very little light and are very difficult to see, which makes them essentially invisible.”
Saturn’s rings are composed mostly of water ice particles ranging in size from small grains to huge blocks. They also have traces of dust and rocks. The exact proportion of these materials varies in different hoops. These particles orbit the planet and give the rings their bright appearance due to the way they reflect light from the Sun.
Although they appear very large and visible from Earth, they are not in reality. Extending up to 281,635 kilometers from the surface of the gaseous planet, these rings only reach a vertical height of 9 meters and due to this thinness, when seen perfectly from the side, that is, from the edge, they are almost impossible to observe, generating the illusion that they have disappeared, explained the newspaper, The Hill.
According to historical data published by FOX News, Galileo Galilei was the first person to observe Saturn through a telescope in 1610. However, his device could not distinguish the peculiarity that highlights this planet and it was Christiaan Huygens who finally recognized it in 1655 that Saturn had a ring or rings that were loose around it.
Since this discovery, scientists have studied these structures and NASA’s Cassini-Huygens mission determined that they probably formed about 100 million years ago, which is relatively recent for space. Saturn is a 4 billion-year-old gas giant and is not the only planet with rings, but according to NASA, it has the most spectacular and complex ones.
In 2018, the space agency announced that the Voyager 1 and 2 missions confirmed decades ago that Saturn is losing its rings. James O’Donoghue of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center explained that these are being attracted to the planet by gravity as a kind of dusty shower of ice particles under the influence of the magnetic field.
This “ring shower” produces enough water to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool every half hour and could cause Saturn’s rings to disappear within 300 million years. Additionally, the Cassini spacecraft determined that ring material is falling toward the planet’s equator, which could further accelerate its demise, possibly by 100 million years.
Saturn passes quickly, with a day on the planet—the time it takes to orbit—being just 10.7 hours. However, it takes about 29.4 Earth years to complete its orbit around the Sun. And like Earth, Saturn experiences seasons, which are caused by its rotations on one axis.
Despite the disappearance of Saturn’s rings in 2025, this cosmic event should offer a great view of many of its 146 moons. NASA believes that the mass of the moons orbiting the planet is what causes the change in Saturn’s inclination and will continue to occur for the next billion years.