Jackie Morgan, age 10, and his three friends who have a theory for the question:

What is our theory about the on in of Saturn’s rings?

Andy says he has no theory of his own about what caused the dazzling rings around the planet Saturn. He can only report some of the theories of other people. And, since no theory has been proved to be correct, your theory may have a chance of being right. Andy is very curious to know what it is, so please let him know.

To the unaided aye, Saturn rates, at times, among the brightest of stars. The first person to see it through a telescope was, of course, Galileo. He saw two bright bumps, like ears, on either side of the planet and when he looked at a later date they had disappeared. Galileo thought he had discovered three planets in one.

Later he thought again    this time not so clearly. For, it seems that for all his greatness, Galileo was somewhat superstitious. Saturn, he remembered, was the old god tossed out by the ancients in favor of Zeus    tossed out because of his revolting habit of devouring his children. Could this be true? the greet man wandered) Could the planet Saturn give birth to twins and then devour them? Maybe Galileo was only kidding with this notion of his, but it did turn out to be the very first theory concerning the rings of Saturn. At least it is one theory we can write off as a lot of nonsense.

Some forty years later, with improved telescopes, the astronomers were able to see the beautiful planet for what it was    a golden sphere poised in the center of radiant rings. The golden hands circle Saturn's equator, stretching out into space for over 86,000 miles in all directions. Our view of them changes as the planet tips at different angles towards the earth, At times our telescopes reveal them as an oval, almost half as wide as it is long. At times, like Galileo's twins, they almost disappear.

A great French astronomer pointed out that if these glowing rings were solid, they would collapse like a bridge under the pull of Saturn's gravitation. Other astronomers proved that the rings were made of dust fragments, glowing in the reflected light of the sun. There are three of them with a clear space between the outer and second circles.

One theory about their origin saps that they may be the remains of a smaller planet which came within the range of Saturn’s gravita¬tion and split into fragments. Another theory says that this shattered body may have been a satellite, such as our moon. Still another says it may have been a comet. Other explanations suggest that Saturn's rings may have been formed way back when the planet was born.

We do not know for sure how the dazzling rings were formed. But we do know that circled Saturn is one of the most glorious sights in the heavens.  The Voyager spacecraft discovered rings around Jupiter and Uranus