• Question: How many rings are on saturn?

    Asked by iamjesus to Arlene, Colin, David, Eugene, Paul on 13 Nov 2012.
    • Photo: David McKeown

      David McKeown answered on 13 Nov 2012:

      Its hard to say exactly…

      Scientist break the rings down into 14 different subdivisions of rings. These look like individual rings from far away. If you zoom in there are thinner rings within those subdivisions (sometimes called ringlets), so if you count those also there are a lot more that 14

    • Photo: Paul Higgins

      Paul Higgins answered on 13 Nov 2012:

      I’m going to wager there are thousands of individual rings of dust and rocks around saturn if you look close enough… The number of major rings has to do with how saturn formed. After it formed, there were clumps in the leftover dust and gas, that eventually became saturns moons. As the moons formed, they pulled in gas and created spaces in saturn’s disk, which gave the appearance of rings.

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