Saturn's rings are taller than the Moon is far. Almost.
Saturn's rings stretch about 280,000 kilometres across — nearly the full gap between the Earth and the Moon. That number is staggering enough on its own. But here's where it gets absurd: in many places, those same rings are only around ten metres thick. Ten metres. That's a decent-sized house. Lay that house on its side and spin it across a distance close to the Earth-Moon gap, and you have Saturn's rings. If you scaled them down to the size of a sheet of A4 paper, the thickness would be far finer than the paper itself. They're made almost entirely of water ice — from tiny grains to house-sized boulders — and they won't last forever. Over tens of millions of years, they'll gradually disperse. We caught Saturn at just the right moment. Follow Deep Field Vault for more of the universe.