Saturn's rings could almost reach the Moon — and they're 10 metres thick.
Saturn's rings stretch about 280,000 kilometres across. That's most of the distance between Earth and the Moon. Now picture that same structure from the side. In many places it is just 10 metres thick. Not kilometres. Metres. If you scaled the rings down to the width of a football pitch, the thickness would be finer than a human hair. They are not solid — they are billions of fragments of water ice, ranging from tiny grains to chunks the size of a house, all orbiting in an almost impossibly flat disc. Every giant planet has rings, but none are as bright as Saturn's. And here's the stranger part: they are temporary. Over tens of millions of years, they will gradually disappear. Follow Deep Field Vault for more of the universe, one true fact at a time.