Did You Know: Space – What are Saturn’s rings made of?
When you look at Saturn through a telescope, you can see beautiful rings circling the planet. They are made of icy rock and dust. No one knows for sure why Saturn has rings.
They may be the remains of a moon that was destroyed or material left over from when Saturn formed.
Gaps in the rings
The dark areas are gaps in between Saturn’s rings.
The biggest gap is called the Cassini Division and is thought to have been made by Mimas, one of Saturn’s moons. As Mimas orbits Saturn, its gravity pulls rocks out of the rings.
Close-up
There are billions of pieces of ice, rock, and dust in Saturn’s rings. The rings are as wide as the gap between the Earth and the moon.
Do any other planets have rings around them?
Uranus
Ice giant Uranus has rings that circle it.
The rings are much smaller than those around Saturn. Uranus’s neighbor Neptune has similar rings, too.
Jupiter
The rings that circle Jupiter are mostly made of dust. This dust was formed when space rocks, or meteoroids, crashed into some of Jupiter’s moons.