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Seeing
Saturn's Rings from Earth
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Saturn is ~10 AU from Earth
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compare 5 AU for Jupiter
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Saturn looks smaller in telescope
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1610: Galileo saw funny "ears"
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Ears came and went every
couple of years
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(now you see them now you
don't)
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1655: Huygens proposed "ears"
were a thin flat ring
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inclination of the rings
relative to ecliptic accounted for changes
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rings aligned with Saturn's
equator
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In 1675 Giovanni Cassini
first to see gap in rings
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Cassini division
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Rings lettered A, B, C ....
Saturn from a good
Earth telescope
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