Our Solar System contains eight planets (sorry, Pluto) orbiting around the Sun. But while all planets are important members of the club, if we’re being honest, we know there’s a crown jewel of our little celestial neighborhood: Saturn.
Beyond just being striking to look at, Saturn is a delightfully weird planet. Those stunning rings? They hold a few secrets that have captivated scientists for centuries.
We’re obsessed with Saturn’s rings—especially one in particular, the F-ring. It’s an ever-evolving, distant, strange, and narrow band of material, especially when compared to the planet’s innermost rings.
Why do we love the F-ring so much? Watch Pop Mech editor Jackie Appel explore its fascinating history and enduring weirdness.
In 1979, scientists found the F-ring, which until then was an entire previously unknown ring of Saturn. Thanks to the Voyager space probes and some good-old-fashioned astronomers, one of the biggest secrets of the F ring was revealed just a year after its original discovery, in 1980.
It helped us understand just what makes the ring so different from its other cousins orbiting the planet, and allowed us to piece together some of the complicated orbital dynamics at play in Saturn’s fascinating system.
Watch the full episode above now. And don’t miss the rest of our space exploration show Pop Mech Explains the Universe.
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