Scientists Discover New Ring Around Saturn

Imagine an onion ring that's so big you could fit the planet Earth inside it - 1 billion times!

Well, according to scientists, that's the size of the previously unknown ring that's just been discovered around the planet Saturn.

Only the scientists say this ring is made up of dust and ice particles - not onions.

"This is one super-sized ring," said University of Virginia astronomer Anne Verbiscer.

It's been approximately 400 years since the legendary astronomer Galileo first identified the rings around Saturn.

So why are scientists discovering this new ring only now? The reason, they say, is that the ring is very diffuse and dark, so it doesn't reflect much visible sunlight.

("Diffuse" means the tiny individual particles that make up the ring are spread out and scattered, not tightly packed together in a solid blob.)

The scientists say they only discovered the ring now because they're the first people ever to look at it with an infrared telescope - NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

Infrared light is light that's invisible to the naked eye.

So you can't see this new ring without a specialized telescope that can see infrared light.

The scientists also say this newly discovered ring doesn't run exactly around all the other rings.

Instead, they say it's at a 27-degree angle to the other main rings.

So it tilts a little compared to the other rings, kind of like a hat brim cocked at an angle.

According to National Geographic News, the newly discovered ring is so large it extends out about 8 million miles from the planet Saturn itself.

To give you an idea of how large a distance that is, consider this: the Moon is "only" about a quarter of a million miles from Earth.

And think about how far away that is.

The Spitzer Telescope itself is a long way from Earth right now.

NASA launched it in 2003.

And since then, it has traveled 66 million miles from our planet, according to the Associated Press.

The Spitzer continues to orbit the sun, though, revealing new information about our solar system.