Topics: News, Space, NASA, Earth, World News
Saturn's rings will disappear in just a few months and the reason why is pretty bizarre.
The rings of Saturn - which most of us can picture from images or school textbooks - are made up of chunks of ice, as well as rock and dust.
Humans first discovered them way back in 1610, when astronomer Galileo Galilei observed the gigantic rings.
However, they'll soon disappear from our view, thanks to a phenomenon that occurs every few decades.
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NASA has previously spoken out about the rings. While at one point, scientists believed that it would take approximately 300 million years for them to disappear completely, this has been brought forward.
In fact, data collected by NASA's Cassini spacecraft back in 2017 revealed it's expected to actually take 100 million years for the rings to disappear permanently.
Eventually, they will melt away thanks to the Sun's UV radiation and other meteoroids colliding with the rings and causing the ice particles to vaporise.
While that's not set to happen for a while, in just a few months, we won't be able to see the rings from Earth at all.
Let us explain why...
Although Saturn's rings can normally be seen with a small telescope, in 2025, the planet will be tilting in a way that means its rings will be out of view.
According to IFL Science, the 'angle of tilt' will 'drop to zero when it gets to 23 March, 2025'.
Now, the rings will return, but they'll also disappear from our view in November 2025, too.
Usually, this occurs every 29.5 years, which is the time in takes for Saturn to orbit the Sun.
It's not the only strange phenomenon that goes on with Saturn's rings, either.
Around every 15 years or so, large smudges - dubbed ‘spokes’ by NASA - appear on Saturn’s rings and scientists remain baffled by what causes them, despite them first being spotted back in the 1980s.
Last year, the spokes could be seen on images taken from the Hubble Telescope.
Scientists are now hoping they can gain a deeper understanding of exactly what is going on.
NASA planetary scientist Amy Simon said: “Thanks to Hubble's OPAL program, which is building an archive of data on the outer solar system planets, we will have longer dedicated time to study Saturn's spokes this season than ever before.”
The marks have been nicknamed 'spokes' due to the pattern they make resembling spokes on a bicycle.
