New giant ring discovered around Saturn

NASA said the newly discovered belt -- by far the largest of the giant planet's many rings -- is located at the far reaches of the Saturnian system, with an orbit tilted 27 degrees from the main ring plane.

"The bulk of its material starts about 3.7 million miles from the planet and extends outward roughly another 7.4 million miles," the space agency said in a statement. "One of Saturn's farthest moons, Phoebe, circles within the newfound ring, and is likely the source of its material."

Astronomers say the ring's vertical height is about 20 times the diameter of the planet and it would take about one billion Earths stacked together to fill the ring.

"This is one supersized ring," said Anne Verbiscer, an astronomer at the University of Virginia-Charlottesville. "If you could see the ring, it would span the width of two full moons' worth of sky, one on either side of Saturn."
NASA said the ring is so diffuse, it reflects little sunlight or visible light. But its particles shine with infrared light that Spitzer was able to observe.

Verbiscer and Michael Skrutskie of the University of Virginia and Douglas Hamilton of the University of Maryland report the discovery in the early online edition of the journal Nature.

Copyright 2009 by United Press International.