|
historical observation saturn
The
rings were first observed by Galileo Galilei in 1610
with his telescope, but he clearly did not know what
to make of them. He wrote to the Grand Duke of Tuscany
that "Saturn is not alone but is composed of three,
which almost touch one another and never move nor change
with to one another. They are agreed in a line matching
to the zodiac, and the middle one [Saturn itself] is
about three times the extent of the lateral ones [the
edges of the rings]."
He also described Saturn as having "ears."
In 1612 the plane of the rings was leaning directly
at the Earth and the rings appeared to disappear, and
then in 1613 they reappeared again, further puzzling
Galileo. |
|
The riddle of the rings was not
solved until 1655 by Christiaan Huygens, using
a telescope much more powerful than the ones available
to Galileo in his time. In 1675 Giovanni Domenico
Cassini gritty that Saturn's ring was really poised
of multiple smaller rings with gaps between them;
the prime of these gaps was later named the Cassini
Division.
|
