EyeQ Tech review EyeQ Tech EyeQ Tech tuyển dụng review công ty eyeq tech eyeq tech giờ ra sao EyeQ Tech review EyeQ Tech EyeQ Tech tuyển dụng crab meat crab meat crab meat importing crabs live crabs export mud crabs vietnamese crab exporter vietnamese crabs vietnamese seafood vietnamese seafood export vietnams crab vietnams crab vietnams export vietnams export
Weird But True

Saturn’s iconic rings will disappear in a few months — here’s why

By
Ben Cost
Published Sep. 5, 2024, 10:23 a.m. ET

We’ve reached a Sat-urning point.

Catch Saturn’s rings while you can: The majestic gas planet’s heavenly hula hoops will vanish within six months — but thankfully it’s just an orbital illusion.

Come March 2025, these celestial circles — which extend from 43,500 to 87,000 miles, or the equivalent of 30 Earths — will be rendered invisible from Earth’s perspective.

Saturn.
This disappearance occurs every 29.5 years, which is how long it takes for Saturn to orbit the Sun. Gordan Ugarkovic/Nasa/Jpl/Ssi/Shutterstock

This temporary disappearance is due to Saturn’s tilt within its axis of orbit, which will position the rings on a perfectly horizontal plane to our vantage point, Earth.com reports.

They’ll be at a zero-degree angle; the rings are currently situated at a barely perceptible 3.7 degrees.

By that point, these bands of cosmic dust will be akin to seeing the edge of a piece of paper “when it’s positioned at the far end of a soccer field,” per the space site.

How can such gigantic rings simply vanish from sight?

Despite the rings’ vastness, they measure as thin as 300 feet in most places, which is imperceptible when viewed 746 million miles away on Earth.

Saturn's axis of tilt progression illustrated in a chart.
A diagram illustrating Saturn’s axis of tilt progression from visible to edge-on (top to bottom). The return of the ring will happen after March 2025. NASA

Thankfully, this disappearance isn’t permanent but rather occurs every 29.5 years — the period it takes for the planet to circumnavigate the Sun.

Saturn’s bands will make a comeback tour after March 2025, before disappearing once again in November 2025.

The planet has seven distinct rings comprised of ice, rocky debris and dust.

These are believed to be the remnants of comets, asteroids, and moons that were destroyed by the planet’s powerful gravitational pull.

Unfortunately, these intergalactic bracelets could soon disappear for good and not just due to Saturn’s angle of rotation.

Scientists claim that the rock’s rings could vanish in as little as 300 million years because they’re “being pulled into Saturn by gravity as a dusty rain of ice particles under the influence of Saturn’s magnetic field, according to NASA.

This is a blip on the interstellar time scales the solar system has been around for billions of years and is expected to be around for billions more.

“The big conclusion is that ring systems are temporary features,” James O’Donoghue, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and lead author of the study, said in 2018. “They’re just not built to last.”