SATURN’S BIG SEVEN
When viewed from a distance, Saturn displays seven distinctive rings. These are simply named as the first seven letters of the alphabet. This ordering doesn’t correspond to their distance from the planet, but the order in which they were discovered.
Each ring contains orbiting matter, and combined the rings stretch across thousands of miles of space.
The first three rings to be discovered – A, B and C – are the easiest to spot; they’re the bright main rings of the planet. Meanwhile, the D ring is extremely dim and lies closest to the planet. The E ring is the largest and outermost ring, spanning about 620,000 miles and lying next to another faint ring, the G ring. Saturn’s F ring is made up of many narrow rings. As each one contains multiple kinks and bright clusters, this ring produces a braided pattern.