Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/288

 Galileo. To Galileo, whose telescope was not much superior to the field-glass of today, the planet appeared triple with two outer stars touching the middle star "like two servants assisting old Saturn to complete his journey." A few years later when he again turned his telescope upon Saturn, these attendant orbs had disappeared. "It is possible some demon mocked me," he exclaimed, and would look no more.

Later the side features reappeared and became larger and larger, until they fitted the globe "like a pair of handles." The drawings of those days look very strange to us now, for some pictured a bar run through the planet or a ball with ears. Fifty years later, in 1656, Huygens, with his 123-foot tubeless telescope, solved the mystery and proved the existence of a thin, disconnected ring, which was as astounding a phenomenon as the ears or bars or handles.

Proof by direct observation that the ring was neither liquid