Saturn's rings set to disappear within the next 18 months
With meteor showers, mysterious planets and lunar eclipses, there’s often new things appearing to our eyes from up in the skies.
But there’s things in space disappearing too, with something particularly iconic set to be gone pretty soon.
NASA has confirmed that the clock is ticking for a last glimpse of Saturn’s rings.
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Yes, those big and bright rings in our solar system are going to vanish from our view.
There’s said to be only 18 months left before they disappear from sight.
Made up of chunks of ice and rock coated with materials like dust, we can typically see them around the sixth planet in our solar system from Earth with a small telescope.
But data collected from the American space agency in 2017 found that the rings are likely to totally disappear in 100 million years.
Now, here me out, I know that’s not ‘soon’ but they are still going to ‘disappear’ in 2025.
By that year the planet will be tilting in a certain way as it orbits the sun, obscuring those iconic rings from view.
According to IFL Science, the ‘angle of tilt’ will ‘drop to zero’ when we reach 23 March 2025.
This tilt in the orbit means that every 13.7 to 15.7, we will see Saturn perfectly on its side for a short period.
And obviously, with the planet being 746million miles away at its closest to Earth, this position means the rings temporarily vanish.
IFL Science has given the dates that this will happen again already.
“The next event following 2025 will be a triple one again: October 15, 2038, and then April 1, and July 9, 2039," it said.
Once they have disappeared this time round, you’ll not be able to see those famous rings in full view again until 2032.
At the moment, Saturn’s rings are titled downwards towards our planet at an angle of nine degrees.
By next year, it will have reduced to only 3.7 degrees.
We’ve not experienced this vanishing trick since September 2009 and before that, it hasn’t happened since February 1996.
Fancy some more Saturn rings facts? Go on, I know you do.
The impressive ring system extends up to a massive 175,000 miles from the planet, but the vertical height of them is only about 30 feet.
Although they’ve not got particularly exciting names, NASA refers to the main rings as A, B and C with the fainter ones being D, E, F and G.
At least there is one named Phoebe – that’s a bit fun, right?
Jess Battison