In Maurice’s _Indian Antiquities_ is an engraving of Sani, the Saturn
of the Hindoos, taken from an image in a very ancient pagoda, which
represents the deity encompassed by a _ring_ formed of two serpents.
Hence it is inferred that the ancients were acquainted with the
existence of the ring of Saturn.
Arago mentions the remarkable fact of the ring and fourth satellite of
Saturn having been seen by Sir W. Herschel with his smaller telescope
by the naked eye, without any eye-piece.
The first or innermost of Saturn’s satellites is nearer to the central
body than any other of the secondary planets. Its distance from the
centre of Saturn is 80,088 miles; from the surface of the planet
47,480 miles; and from the outmost edge of the ring only 4916 miles.
The traveller may form to himself an estimate of the smallness of
this amount by remembering the statement of the well-known navigator,
Captain Beechey, that he had in three years passed over 72,800 miles.
According to very recent observations, Saturn’s ring is divided into
_three_ separate rings, which, from the calculations of Mr. Bond, an
American astronomer, must be fluid. He is of opinion that the number
of rings is continually changing, and that their maximum number, in
the normal condition of the mass, does not exceed _twenty_. Mr. Bond
likewise maintains that the power which sustains the centre of gravity
of the _ring_ is not in the planet itself, but in its satellites; and
the satellites, though constantly disturbing the ring, actually sustain
it in the very act of perturbation. M. Otto Struve and Mr. Bond have
lately studied with the great Munich telescope, at the observatory of
Pulkowa, the _third_ ring of Saturn, which Mr. Lassell and Mr. Bond
discovered to be _fluid_. They saw distinctly the dark interval between
this fluid ring and the two old ones, and even measured its dimensions;
and they perceived at its inner margin an edge feebly illuminated,
which they thought might be the commencement of a fourth ring. These
astronomers are of opinion, that the fluid ring is not of very recent
formation, and that it is not subject to rapid change; and they have
come to the extraordinary conclusion, that the inner border of the ring
has, since the time of Huygens, been gradually approaching to the body
of Saturn, and that _we may expect, sooner or later, perhaps in some
dozen of years, to see the rings united with the body of the planet_.
But this theory is by other observers pronounced untenable.