Who Discovered Saturn
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed
Who discovered Saturn? Did the ancients know this planet or is modern science its first analyst? To be honest, in the old times people were better informed on the movement of the stars than we are today, and the presence of Saturn must have been noticed even with primitive telescopes. Most often, Galileo is recognized as the scientist who discovered Saturn in 1610, since in his notes he even wrote a theory about the rings. What he saw resembled some little ears on each side of the planet, and he presumed they were globes. Yet, later on, the white rings were identified and have hold their position as the most spectacular solar system formation ever since.
The analysis of the globes suggested by Galileo came into discussion because of a confusion he didn’t know how to explain. He was the astronomer who discovered Saturn, but at the same time he thought there were three planets, not one. The clarification of the rings’ presence was provided in 1655 when Christiaan Huygens made the discovery that what Galileo referred to as 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 initiate the theory that Saturn’s rings were not solid or unitary but, consisting of fragments of different sizes.
Nowadays we are aware that the rings consist of ice, rocks and other interplanetary debris, which only proves that the early theories were right. Who discovered Saturn then? In conclusion, we have to admit that the discovery of the solar system has been in progress since we’ve started looking at the stars, and we are far from getting to the bottom. Every year seems to bring something new for us to explore: 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 is there more to discover?
Galileo as the person who discovered Saturn deserves all our respect and consideration, but he is not the only one. The spacecraft which sent the first pictures from Saturn was called Cassini after the astronomer who revealed and analyzed the pattern 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 important. With every space conquest, there is one other step in the direction of learning more about the universe.
Technorati Tags: No Tags
Related Tags: No Tags
Possible Related Posts
