Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/286

 Venus can see no more clearly through that dense atmosphere which surrounds their globe.

The crowning glory of Saturn, its thin flat ring, is poised above the huge body without in any way touching it. Although this ring appears as a solid piece, it is now known positively that it is made up of swarms of meteors or exceedingly minute satellites, all whirling round and round Saturn in the same plane. It may easily be seen why a brightly swirling mass of these shining moons would seem as one object at such a distance.

Through a large telescope it becomes apparent that Saturn's ring is really composed of three rings lying one inside of the other, the two outer rings, which are about 11,000 and 18,000 miles in width, being separated by a dark, narrow clean-cut space of about 2200 miles.

The third ring is a thin, faint inner ring, so transparent that the planet may be seen shining through it. It is about the same width as the outer ring, 11,000 miles, and its inner edge lies only 6000 miles above the surface of the planet. This inner ring is called the "crape ring" because it has a dusky look. It is believed to be the inner ring thinning off toward the planet. It has been suggested that the crape ring may have originated from collisions of particles in the bright ring, thus reducing their orbits, and that the rings of Saturn are slowly shrinking down upon the planet and will sometimes in the future have entirely disappeared.

The first individual to gain a glimpse of Saturn's rings was