Saturn’s iconic rings will DISAPPEAR within months, NASA says

According to NASA, Saturn’s majestic rings will disappear completely from view within six months and then remain invisible for several more months.

The space agency announced last year that stargazers have until 2025 to view the iconic structures, before Saturn comes into direct contact with Earth and the massive rings become a nearly invisible line.

But an updated forecast shows the rings will become invisible starting on March 23.

The cosmic phenomenon is not a sign of a disaster, but is due to Saturn’s orbit around the Sun and its unique axial tilt, couldn’t we just say it’s an illusion?

In March 2025, Earth and Saturn will align in such a way that stargazers with telescopes will be able to view Saturn’s rings edge-on.

creating the illusion that they have completely disappeared.

The rings will gradually come back into view, before disappearing again in November 2025.

Astronomers have observed for centuries that the rings are periodically invisible. This phenomenon occurs every 13 to 16 years.

The last time Saturn’s rings disappeared from Earth’s view was in 2009. This time they are expected to disappear in March 2025.

That will likely be the last time we see this disappearance until at least 2027 or 2028, Jonti Horner, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Southern Queensland, wrote in The conversation.

This rare phenomenon is not only a fascinating sight for stargazers, but also an important learning experience for scientists.

Astronomers have discovered at least 13 of Saturn’s 148 moons during ring plane passes throughout history, including the famous Titan, Enceladus and Mimas.

When astronomers passed through Saturn’s ring plane in 1966, they first saw Saturn’s outer ring, now known as the “E Ring.”

This ring is not as flat or defined as the planet’s six other rings. NASA describes it as “a faint, tenuous doughnut that encircles Saturn.”

Saturn’s rings appear invisible when Earth passes through the planet’s “ring plane” — a region of space aligned with Saturn’s rings.

As Saturn completes its 29.4-year orbit around the Sun, it is tilted at an angle of 26.7 degrees, appearing to nod up and down as seen from Earth

From this angle, “they reflect very little light and are very difficult to see, making them essentially invisible,” Vahe Peroomian, a physicist and astronomer at the University of Southern California, previously told CBS News.

Saturn’s rings are made up of billions of pieces of comets, asteroids, and broken-up moons, which were torn apart by Saturn’s gravity before reaching the planet.

As Saturn orbits the sun for 29.4 years, it is tilted at an angle of 26.7 degrees, so it appears to move up and down when viewed from Earth.

When Saturn is away from Earth, we see its rings from below. When the planet is toward Earth, we see its rings from above.

But every 13 to 16 years, Earth and Saturn align in such a way that we can see the rings edge-on.

The rings are enormous, with a diameter of about 280,000 kilometers and encircling the entire planet with a diameter of 116,000 kilometers.

But their thickness is less than the length of a football field, which is extremely thin compared to the planet itself.

The cosmic phenomenon is scheduled to take place on March 23, 2025. Saturn will appear without its iconic rings for several months after the Sun.

If Saturn were to shrink to the size of a basketball, the thickness of the rings would be about 1/250 the thickness of a human hair, according to NASA.

That’s why the rings seem to disappear when you look at them from the side.

The crossing of the rings creates the illusion that Saturn’s rings have disappeared, but they will not really change in the near future.

However, in millions of years, these iconic cosmic structures could disappear completely.

Studies suggest that the rings are slowly falling onto the planet, a process called “ring rain.” This is partly because meteorites crash into the rings and push pieces of them into Saturn’s gravity.

Research has shown that the rings are losing between 430 and 2,900 kilograms of water ice per second, which makes up 90 to 95 percent of the rings.

But even if degradation continues at that rate, the rings won’t be completely gone for another 15 to 400 million years.