Crazy Image Shows How Earth Compares To Saturn's Rings
But to scientists who study the very large, like astronomers, Earth is unimaginable tiny when compared to what else is out there: larger planets, stars, galaxies, and galaxy clusters.
Offering some perspective of The Size of Stuff is John Brady over at Astronomy Central who produced the image below showing what Earth would look like if it had Saturn's rings:
Saturn's rings, although enormous, are too faint to see from Earth with the naked eye. The first human to ever observe them was Galileo Galilei in 1610 with his home-made telescope, but the Italian physicist died before he could determine what they were. Another 45 years passed before Dutch mathematician, Christiaan Huygens, first suggested they were rings instead of planets as Galilei had initially guessed.
The sixth planet from the sun, Saturn is famous for flaunting the largest, most extensive, and arguably most beautiful set of rings within our solar system. Since Galileo's discovery, Saturn's rings have been extensively labeled, categorized, and studied. Astronomers have names for the rings as well as the gaps in between them, some of which can be seen in the labeled map below (the closest rings to Saturn at the far left):
John Brady has done the math for you and created this awesome image featured on Astronomy Central:
One theory is that the rings formed within the last billion years or so when comets, asteroids, and possibly moons were ripped apart by the gaseous planet's strong gravity. But if this were the case, then the largest planet, Jupiter, should have a similar, if not larger, ring system.
Another explanation is that the rings arose early on during the formation of our solar system, around 4 billion years ago, and are left-over material from when Saturn formed.
Regardless of how the rings formed, there's no denying their beauty. In 2004, the Cassini spacecraft reached orbit around Saturn after a seven-year journey. The spacecraft is the fourth to reach Saturn and continues to orbit the planet today, studying its rings, moons, and Saturn itself.
Although Saturn's rings cover a large space, they're light and extremely thin, measuring about 0.6 miles thick. Earth is approximately 200,000 times more massive than the rings. So, while Saturn's rings might dwarf us in size, we would dominate in a test of the most massive.