New Saturn Ring Discovered

Using infrared, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has spotted an enormous ring encircling Saturn, previously undetected by other telescopes.  The ring is likely composed of ice crystals shed by Phoebe, the farthest Saturnian moon.  The new ring reaches 11 million miles (18 million km) away from the planet.

"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."

The discovery may help solve an age-old riddle of one of Saturn's moons. Iapetus has a strange appearance -- one side is bright and the other is really dark, in a pattern that resembles the yin-yang symbol... The ring is circling in the same direction as Phoebe, while Iapetus, the other rings and most of Saturn's moons are all going the opposite way. According to the scientists, some of the dark and dusty material from the outer ring moves inward toward Iapetus, slamming the icy moon like bugs on a windshield.

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