February 23, 2022
When Galileo first observed Saturn through a rudimentary telescope in 1610, he noted that the planet “has ears”. Forty-five years later, Dutch astronomer Christian Huygens looked at Saturn through a more sophisticated telescope. He proposed that what Galileo had termed “ears” was actually a thin ring around the planet.
Galileo sketched the “ears” he saw around Saturn, which today we know to be the rings. Galileo was able to see that the ears would sometimes disappear and then reappear, which marked the change in Saturn’s position as it moved through its seasons. Image credits: NASA/Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale (left), NASA/Hubble Space Telescope (right)
