Who Discovered Saturn
November 24, 2009
Who discovered Saturn? Was this planet known to the ancients or is it modern science that brought it to our attention? 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 descriptions 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, later on, the white rings were identified and have remained the most spectacular scape in the solar system.
The analysis of the globes given by Galileo came into discussion because of 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 realized 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 create the theory that Saturn’s rings were not solid or unitary but, consisting of small individual parts.
Nowadays we are aware that the rings are made of ice, rocks and other interplanetary remains, which only contributes to underlying the truth of the early theories. 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 get 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?
The tribute paid to Galileo as the person who discovered Saturn is obvious, but he was not the only one. The spacecraft which sent the the close image of Saturn for the first time was called Cassini after the astronomer who revealed and analyzed the pattern of the rings around this planet. Even so, thousands of people unknown to the public are presently involved in space programs; maybe their names are not known to history, but their contribution 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.
