What are Saturn’s rings made of, and how were they formed?
Saturn’s rings are mostly made of ice and rocks covered in ice. The sizes of these particles range from a centimetre up to several metres. The rings range from 30km up to 300,000 km in width, but are less than 1 km thick! Saturn has 7 rings in total, but only 3 of them are visible from Earth. While we know what they’re made of, there is no consistent theory as to their origin. Saturn may have had rings since it was born, but the current rings are only a few hundred millions years old (compared to the billions of years Saturn has been around). There are other planets with rings like Saturn: Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus, and these are all called Jovian planets.
