rings

How Saturn got its rings, why they're disappearing, and why they're paper-thin — the full story from Galileo to Cassini's grand finale.

Saturn's iconic rings are made of more than 90% water ice and span nearly 300,000 km across, yet they are only about 10 meters thick. Surprisingly young in cosmic terms, the rings are slowly draining into Saturn and will vanish entirely in roughly 100 million years.