WAS SATURN’S RING KNOWN TO THE ANCIENTS?
In Maurice’s Indian Antiquities is an engraving of Sani, the Saturn of the Hindoos, taken from an image in a very ancient pagoda, which represents the deity encompassed by a ring formed of two serpents. Hence it is inferred that the ancients were acquainted with the existence of the ring of Saturn.
Arago mentions the remarkable fact of the ring and fourth satellite of Saturn having been seen by Sir W. Herschel with his smaller telescope by the naked eye, without any eye-piece.
The first or innermost of Saturn’s satellites is nearer to the central body than any other of the secondary planets. Its distance from the centre of Saturn is 80,088 miles; from the surface of the planet 47,480 miles; and from the outmost edge of the ring only 4916 miles. The traveller may form to himself an estimate of the smallness of this amount by remembering the statement of the well-known navigator, Captain Beechey, that he had in three years passed over 72,800 miles.
According to very recent observations, Saturn’s ring is divided into three separate rings, which, from the calculations of Mr. Bond, an American astronomer, must be fluid. He is of opinion that the number of rings is continually changing, and that their maximum number, in the normal condition of the mass, does not exceed twenty. Mr. Bond likewise maintains that the power which sustains the centre of gravity of the ring is not in the planet itself, but in its satellites; and the satellites, though constantly disturbing the ring, actually sustain it in the very act of perturbation. M. Otto Struve and Mr. Bond have lately studied with the great Munich telescope, at the observatory of Pulkowa, the third ring of Saturn, which Mr. Lassell and Mr. Bond discovered to be fluid. They saw distinctly the dark interval between this fluid ring and the two old ones, and even measured its dimensions; and they perceived at its inner margin an edge feebly illuminated, which they thought might be the commencement of a fourth ring. These astronomers are of opinion, that the fluid ring is not of very recent formation, and that it is not subject to rapid change; and they have come to the extraordinary conclusion, that the inner border of the ring has, since the time of Huygens, been gradually approaching to the body of Saturn, and that we may expect, sooner or later, perhaps in some dozen of years, to see the rings united with the body of the planet. But this theory is by other observers pronounced untenable.