Who Discovered Saturn
Who discovered Saturn? Did the ancients know this planet or is modern science its first analyst? The truth is that in the antiquity people had a far better knowledge of the sky map than we have today, and it is possible that they were familiar with Saturn by means of primitive telescopes. Most often, Galileo is widely known as the scientist who discovered Saturn in 1610, as in his notes he even wrote a theory about the rings. What he saw resembled some little ears on either side of the planet, and he presumed they were globes. Yet, after a while, the white rings were identified and have remained the most spectacular scape in the solar system.
The analysis of the globes made by Galileo started from a confusion he didn’t know how to explain. He was the person who discovered Saturn, but the thing is that he considered to have seen three planets instead of one. The clarification of the rings’ presence was provided in 1655 when Christiaan Huygens made the discovery that what Galileo called globes were actually rings, butnobody could tell what they were made of until some twenty years later Domenico Cassini had a revelation. He was the one to launch the theory that Saturn’s rings were broken or discontinuous, consisting of fragments of different sizes.
Presently we know that the rings are made of ice, rocks and other interplanetary remains, which only proves that the early theories were right. Who discovered Saturn then? A fair conclusion is that this part of our solar system gradually revealed itself to our eyes, but the discovery is not by far complete. Every year seems to bring something new for us to discover: and even if more than forty satellites have been discovered around Saturn, more remain hidden to our eyes for now. Thus the question is not about who discovered Saturn, but what surprises are there in stock for us?
The tribute paid to Galileo as the person who discovered Saturn is obvious, but he was not the only one. The spacecraft which captured the first pictures from Saturn was called Cassini after the scientist who revealed and analyzed the structure of the rings around this planet. Even so, there are many other people who are currently taking part to space exploration projects; maybe their names are not known to history, but their effort is just as great and relevant. With every step we take towards knowing our universe, we claim one more victory in the exploration of the unknown.
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