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Joined: May 2008
Posts: 4,707
Master Elite Member
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" Almost Designed"?
Have you ever looked at the night sky through a telescope? Many who have can tell you that they still remember the first time they found themselves looking at the planet Saturn. It is almost a startling site. Against a backdrop of endless black dusted with countless glittering stars,there hangs a luminous orb wreathed with flat, elegant rings!
What are theses rings? Back in 1610,when the astronomer Galileo first looked at Saturn through his handmade telescope, the view was so fuzzy, that Saturn looked like a planet with ears-- a central orb flanked by two smaller ones.
As telescopes improved over the years, astronomers saw the rings more clearly, but they still argued over the composition of the rings. Many asserted that the rings were rigid, solid disks. Not untill 1895 did astronomers have convinceing proof that the rings were composed of many particules of rock and ice.
The book The Far Planets notes: " Saturn's rings, a set of ribbons fashioned from uncountable icy fragments, rank among the chief wonders of the Solar System. The gleaming halo is enormous, extending 250,000 miles from an inner edge just above the planet's atmosphere to an outer rim almost to wispy to discern. It is also astonishingly thin, less then a hundred feet on average."
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