Saturn’s famous rings are about to temporarily disappear from view for ground-based telescopes every 13-15 years due to the positioning of the planet. The rings are made of ice and rock coated in space dust and are close together, causing them to vanish from view periodically. While they will reappear to observers on Earth by March 2025, they will temporarily disappear again in November at their narrowest point. The rings will transition to their widest visibility by 2032 and are expected to eventually disappear entirely. NASA’s Voyager 2 mission in 1981 found that the iconic rings are slowly vanishing as gravity pulls them into the planet in the form of dusty rain or ice particles, a process estimated to take 300 million years. However, the Cassini spacecraft discovered that the rings could disappear even faster, with another 100 million years estimated. While the rings disappearing is an inevitable eventuality, for now, astronomers and stargazers can enjoy witnessing this natural phenomenon as Saturn’s rings vanish and reappear in the coming years.
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Why Saturn’s rings will become invisible by 2025
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