The picture above is of the planet Saturn. This picture was obviously not taken from Earth because there is no possible way that we can see all of Saturn, including the side in the shadow since we are in the inside circle and Saturn is in the outer circles of our solar system. This picture was actually taken by a man-made satellite called the Cassini spacecraft which is now in Saturn's orbit and has been taking pictures of Saturn allowing us to attain more knowledge about it.
Around Saturn you can see it's massive rings. These rings are actually millions of billions of rock, sand and ice particles ranging from around the size of sand to rocks as big as houses or even buildings! Some of these rocks are actually from left over pieces from when Saturn was first made. Others come from debris from a meteor or an asteroid hitting Saturn or one of it's moons. The gravitation of Saturn and its moons (up to 60 moons) actually are what keep the rings in place. However, don't think that these rocks are just floating up and down in one place. Theses pieces are actually moving around Saturn at a very high rate which is why the rings seem to blend into one another. You may think that there are only a couple of rings surrounding Saturn, however, there are thousands of rings that circle around Saturn with widths ranging around 30 to 300 feet!
Although you can't see it, all the outer planets have rings surrounding them/ It just seems that Saturn has more rings that are bigger and reflect more light which enable us to see it.
Why is it that all the outer planets have rings and not the inner planets?
In reality, all the planets, yes, including Earth, once had rings around it. So actually Earth did have rings surrounding it once but they were just too unstable to sustain and therefore the pieces or rock and ice we able to pull away from Earth's gravitational pull and fly away.
Unfortunately though, we do have a type of ring surrounding the Earth, rings made of our waste and some debris from things such as our space ships and satellites. This is a problem that we need to start fixing because not only can it possibly hinder future exhibitions in space it may actually affect us people on Earth as well as our planets,
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