NASA reported that they have found a new ring on Saturn. This ring is made up of sparse ice and dust particles which would explain why it took this long to find it as its materials are not densely packed, as in the other Saturn rings, and because of that they don't reflect much visible light. In fact, this ring is so weak and empty that if you stand in the middle of it you wouldn't even realize it.
Even though this ring is weak and empty, it is HUGE. At it's closest its 3.7 million miles (6 million kilometers) away from Saturn and it extends outward to about 7.4 million miles (12 million kilometers). The diameter of this ring is just enormous and is the equivalent of lining up 300 Saturns side by side. The ring is also very thick and is about 20 times as thick as the diameter of it's hosting gas giant planet. The volume of this ring is so big that you could fit in it 1 billion Earths.
NASA named this ring the Phoebe Ring as it encompass the orbital plane of Saturn's moon Phoebe and as such shares Phoebe's tilted retrograded orbit of 27 degrees from Saturn's equator. Since the Phoebe Ring shares it's moon tilted retrograded orbit, NASA has speculated that it's ice and dust particles came from meteoroid impacts on Phoebe.
The ring was discovered using NASA's infra-red Spitzer Space Telescope.
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