Where did Jupiter and Saturns rings come from?
The rings are not left over debris from the formation of these planets. Their delicate nature of mostly icy volatiles (easily evaporated material) would never have survived during the planet building stages of Jupiter and Saturn. Instead, they likely come from capturing material from close approaching comets and tidally-ripped up bits of moons or asteroids. The Collision of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter The comet was first identified on a photograph taken 24 March 1993. Subsequent photographs showed that the comet was split into many separate fragments. Before the end of March it was realized that the comet had made a very close approach to Jupiter in mid-1992. By April, 1993, it was found that the comet was in orbit around Jupiter and would to impact Jupiter in 1994. As many as 22 individually tracked fragments of the comet SL9 impacted Jupiter. They were labeled fragments A through W. The image shown here was taken by HST on July 21 1994, about 2.5 hours after R’s impact. A lar
