Saturn's rings will disappear from view in March 2025, NASA says
Saturn's rings will seemingly disappear from view in 2025, a phenomenon caused by the planet's rotation on an axis. Saturn won't actually lose its rings in 2025, but they will go edge-on, meaning they will be essentially invisible to earthlings, NASA confirmed to CBS News.
The rings will only be slightly visible in the months before and after they go edge-on, Amy Simon, senior scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a statement to CBS News. Those who want to see what Saturn looks like on various dates can use the PDS rings node, she said.
Because the planet rotates on an axis tilted by 26.7 degrees, the view of its rings from Earth changes with time, Vahe Peroomian, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Southern California, told CBS News via email.
Every 13 to 15 years, Earth sees Saturn's rings edge-on, meaning "they reflect very little light, and are very difficult to see, making them essentially invisible," Peroomian said.
The rings last went edge-on in 2009 and they will be precisely edge-on on March 23, 2025, he said.
"Galileo Galilei was the first person to look at Saturn through a telescope, in the early 1610s," Peroomian said. "His telescope could not resolve the rings, and it was up to Christiaan Huygens to finally realize in 1655 that Saturn had a ring or rings that was detached from the planet."
Since that discovery, scientists have studied the rings and NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission determined the rings likely formed about 100 million years ago – which is relatively new for space, Peroomian said.
Even small telescopes can give stargazers a view of Saturn's rings when they aren't edge-on, he said. "The students in my astronomy class at USC observed Saturn through a telescope just last week, and the rings were clearly visible."
After going edge-on in 2025, the rings will be visible a few months later.
Saturn, a gas giant that is 4 billion years old, isn't the only planet with rings – but it does have the most spectacular and complex ones, according to NASA.
In 2018, NASA said its Voyager 1 and 2 missions confirmed decades ago that Saturn is losing its rings. "The rings are being pulled into Saturn by gravity as a dusty rain of ice particles under the influence of Saturn's magnetic field," NASA said.
The so-called "ring rain" produces enough water to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool every half-hour and it could cause Saturn's rings to disappear in 300 million years, said James O'Donoghue, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Cassini spacecraft also determined ring material is falling into the planet's equator, which could cause the rings to disappear even faster – in 100 million years.
A day on Saturn – the amount of time it takes to make one rotation – only lasts 10.7 hours, but it takes about 29.4 Earth years to complete its orbit around the sun. Like Earth, Saturn experiences seasons – this is caused by their rotations on an axis.