Saturn's rings are only about 30 feet thick and that number has been living in my head rent free

Holly Mason · 2026-09-30T05:50:03.068189+00:00

I was reading a NASA fact sheet on my phone during lunch and it said the main rings of Saturn are maybe 30 feet thick in most places. Thirty feet. The rings stretch 175,000 miles across, roughly three quarters of the distance from Earth to the Moon, and they are thinner than a bowling lane is long. I always pictured them as these deep chunky bands like in the textbook pictures, and it turns out they are more like a sheet of paper taped to a football field. I pulled up Cassini images for an hour after that and started seeing them completely differently, all those gaps and waves are happening in something that is basically flat. So now I want to know what stat broke your brain like this, because I cannot stop thinking about how something that big can be that thin.

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Saturn's rings are only about 30 feet thick and that number has been living in my head rent free | Astronomy Photos - Chatter Central