Saturn's Massive Phoebe Ring: Thicker Than Previously Thought

Saturn is known for its rings. Until now, though, scientists didn't realize exactly how big they were. They've now found that Saturn's outer ring is far larger than anyone thought.

"I was giving talks saying Saturn has a giant invisible ring, which makes you sound just perfectly crazy," said Douglas Hamilton, a planetary scientist at the University of Maryland. "it is 10 to 20 times larger than the second-biggest ring, so this thing is absolutely gargantuan."

In 2009, researchers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope found that there was an outer ring circling Saturn that hadn't been seen before. This ring was made mostly of tiny dark dust particles, which made it difficult to see.

Now, scientists have taken a closer look at this ring, dubbed the Phoebe ring, and have found it's truly immense. In fact, the ring is 270 times the diameter of Saturn and 10 times the diameter of the next largest ring, Saturn's E ring, according to The Space Reporter.

The ring itself has only been revealed by infrared cameras because the dust particles in it absorb heat from the sun. Because of the huge distance between the ring and the planet, it's likely the particles that make up the ring are very old-possibly by billions of years. It's also possible that the tiny particles are material ejected for the distant moon, Phoebe.

Currently, researchers are planning to use some large scale ground telescopes on Earth to take a closer look at the massive ring made up of tiny particles.

The findings are published in the journal Nature.

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