That's one of the things we're hoping Cassini will help to answer. There are currently three theories of how Saturn got its rings: The rings may be remnants of the material that formed Saturn's moons, but which were prevented from coalescing into a moon because they were inside the Roche limit . A medium-size moon might have strayed inside the Roche limit, and been pulled to pieces by tidal forces.

The rings are remnants of material of the early solar system that never formed into satellites because they were within the Roche limit. A medium size moon of Saturn strayed inside the Roche limit and was pulled apart by tidal forces, forming the rings.

Ring models haven't yet been assembled; however, the rings of Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune are extremely dim and most likely invisible to the naked eye except at just the right geometry.

The Hubble telescope has captured snapshots of Saturn with its rings nearly edge-on to our view. Read more about it. Saturn's rings are incredibly thin, with a thickness of only about 30 feet (10 meters). The rings are made of dusty ice, in the form of boulder-sized and smaller chunks that gently collide with each other as they orbit around Saturn. Saturn's gravitational field constantly disrupts these ice chunks, keeping them spread out and preventing them from combining to form a moon.

It takes Saturn 29.5 years to complete one revolution around the Sun. As it circles the Sun, the angle of the Saturn's rings relative to the Sun varies by 27.3 degrees. Twice during the 29.5 years, the rings are edge-on to the Sun. Since, as seen from Saturn, the Earth appears not more then 6 degrees from the Sun, it too crosses the ring plane at around the same time.

All the giant planets have rings, but most are thin and faint. Saturn's are spectacular - broad, bright, multicoloured and made up of thousands of ringlets like the grooves on an old vinyl record. They consist of loose, icy debris, ranging from microscopic dust, to boulders bigger than a house. So where did all this rubble come from? Astronomers have several theories.

No. The color is anodized onto the aluminum rings -- it becomes part of the metal, and will not chip off or lose its color with time. The color is fully integrated in the nylon rings as well.

Other planets, like Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus have rings also, but Saturn's rings are more breathtaking. It's believed that Saturn's rings were formed when small moons were broken apart by collisions with meteoroids, comets, small asteroids, or other small moons that orbit around Saturn. Over time the gravitational pull of larger moons and of Saturn's equatorial bulge flattened the pieces into the thin disk we now see.

Saturn's rings are an optical illusion on a cosmic scale. Far from solid, they're actually a blizzard of water-ice particles mixed with dust and rock fragments. Most are from around 1 cm to 5 meters, but they range from smoke-size to as big as a house. A few may reach kilometer-size. Each "particle" orbits Saturn independently, a moon unto itself.

The College of Arts and Sciences Annual Update form was originally modeled on the forms used for tenure and promotion. (Annual Update forms are available at Loyola.edu, Academic Affairs, Information for Faculty.) It is important that there is basic continuity between these forms so that it is clear that cumulative annual review feeds into tenure and promotion decisions.

The name comes from the founders of the company, widows and widowers, who found one another in chat rooms on America Online. See also our History page.

The planetary statistics of these two planets I created from analyzing the cartoon images, and comparing them to that of Earth. (Remember, this is some of the stuff that I created, and to please ask me before adding them to your site!)

quot;That one hit me because I wanted something that summed up the philosophy of the show in those main titles."

It entered Saturn's orbit on July 1, 2004 at 2:36 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)--which would be June 30 at 8:36 p.m. (MDT).

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One way to evaluate the importance of ANSMET meteorites to the planetary science community is to compare publication rates with those based on similar material resources of unquestioned importance. A useful comparison is that between studies of ANSMET meteorite samples and lunar samples recovered during the Apollo moon landings; the core objective of both programs was the recovery of planetary materials.

Our rings are sold in pairs. So, when your receipt says, "Quantity 1", that means one pair.

Rings are probably the result of collisions between moons during formation of the planets or the breakup of moons that are too close to the planet and are ripped apart by tidal forces. The rings are small lumps of rock and ice. Cassini's division is the obvious large gap in Saturn's rings as viewed from Earth, but in fact, close-up, Saturns large rings are made up of a large number of very narrow individual rings.

The National Parenting Publications Awards (NAPPA) was founded by L.A. Parent magazine in 1990. The Children's Products division of NAPPA was designed to help parents make the best, most age-appropriate choices in children's books, toys, music, DVDs, software and spoken-word recordings for their children, from newborn to adolescents. In 1998, the Parenting Resources division was added to provide parents with a "short list" of the best products to help raise and educate their children.

Almost all information contained it this FAQ comes from Sascha K. or the KMFDM page at http://www.kmfdm.net

Scientists identified a type of chimpanzee in West Africa as the source of HIV infection in humans. The virus most likely jumped to humans when humans hunted these chimpanzees for meat and came into contact with their infected blood. Over several years, the virus slowly spread across Africa and later into other parts of the world.

Hippocrates, an ancient Greek physician known as the "father of medicine," named the condition on the basis of the Greek word for CROOKED.

The disease is believed to have first emerged in Guangdong province in China in November and then spread to Hong Kong and elsewhere.

According to information presented in Encyclopedia Britannica, sugar was known in India as early as 3000 BC. Gaura, an old Indian word for sugar, was apparently derived from the name Gur, an ancient monarchy in Bengal.

Kettlebells first appeared in Russia over 100 years ago. Originally kettlebells were used in fairs and markets to balance scales when weighing heavy objects. The Russian military began using them within their training regime because they demand an overhaul of all of the body’s energy systems simultaneously.

A brief history: Both beekeepers had difficulty in shaking and brushing bees at harvest. The son kept designing new and innovative escape boards, bought a very expensive, powerful, and noisy Stihl backpack-type blower, and after getting frustrated with each approach, bought a bottle of Butyric Anhydride.

The Solar System Simulator originated as JPL's SPACE software package, which consisted of a set of computer graphics programs designed to simulate spacecraft trajectories and produce various photographic and video products. The SPACE package was specifically designed for animating space missions and was uniquely suited to JPL mission design.