Saturn's Rings Are Vast but Only About 30 Feet Thick

Saturn’s rings are enormous in one direction and almost nothing in the other. NASA states that the ring system extends up to 175,000 miles, or 282,000 kilometers, from the planet, yet the vertical height is typically about 30 feet, or 10 meters, in the main rings. They are not solid. According to NASA, the rings are made of billions of small chunks of ice and rock coated with other materials such as dust. NASA says they are thought to be pieces of comets, asteroids, or shattered moons that broke up before they reached the planet, torn apart by Saturn’s powerful gravity. The main rings are named A, B, and C, and a gap 2,920 miles wide called the Cassini Division separates rings A and B.