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#Repost I am currently reading an Amazon reprint of "The Heavens and Their Story" — a book originally published in 1908 by the husband and wife astronomer duo, Annie & Walter Maunder, who both worked in the Royal Greenwich Observatory in England. I very much enjoyed this section where they describe the completely unexpected discovery by early astronomers that Saturn is a planet that has "a ring". - Ronan---"The story told by the planet SaturnIt is always the unexpected that happens in astronomy. If there is one thing of which we can feel sure, it is that when we come to study some new object, or some object in a new way, it will present to us some feature so unexpected, so bizarre, that, until we had witnessed its actuality there, we should have declared that such a feature was not only unnatural, but impossible. We have noticed that the sun's corona is one such feature; it is utterly unlike what we might expect in the sun's surroundings. We know of it, so to speak, by accident — by the accident that the moon sometimes hides, and only just hides, the sun; otherwise, though it exists, we could not know of its existence. We have pointed out that it is the vehicle to convey a disturbing power from the sun to the earth. It has been proved many a time and oft, proved without a flaw in the reasoning, that the sun, or its spots, COULD NOT, by any means, by any possibility, cause the magnetic storms on the earth. But, the fact remains that he does. We can never know; we can always learn.But the commonplace planet Saturn is the planet that 'surprises by himself'. Turn back to the "Story told by the Planets" (Chapter IV). The other four had special stories to tell for themselves. Mercury was the twinkler, glancing out for a moment, now to the east, now to the west, of the sun. Venus was the brightest jewel in all the heavens; the bright and morning star, the chief brilliant in the crown of the evening. Mars was the ruddy star, the blood-red star of war that alternately threatened and retreated with the years. Jupiter was the stead, bright-shining 'Hebrew' who crossed over the meridian and paced out the heavens from end to end. But Saturn had nothing special to say for himself. He was only the yellowish star, duller than the rest, slow moving in his westward course, slower moving in his eastward ; so slow and sluggish that the astrologers gave him as his metal, lead : heavy, dull, inert — of little use and less ornament.He preserved this character through all the centuries until Galileo turned his newly invented telescope upon him, in the year 1610. What he saw is best given in his own words —'I have observed with great admiration that Saturn is not a single star, but three together, which, as it were touch each other. They have no relative motion, and are constituted in this form, the middle being much larger than the lateral ones. If we examine them with a glass of inferior power, the threee stars do not appear very distinctly. Saturn has an oblong appearance somewhat like an olive, but by employing a glass which multiplies the superficies MORE than one thousand times, the three globes will be seen very distinctly and almost touching, with only a small dark space between them. I have already discovered a court for Jupiter, and now there are two attendants for this old man, who aid his steps and never leave his side.'This observation was not generally accepted by the other scientists of Galileo's day, because they argued that they knew, and that, therefore, there could be no more room to learn. And Galileo himself received a great shock in perceiving that, during the next couple of years, the lateral bodies were diminishing, though they appeared to be immovable, both with respect to each other and to the central body. Toward the close of 1612 they vanished altogether, and his opponents were triumphant, whilst Galileo mourned —'Are, perhaps, the two smaller stars consumed like spots on the sun? Have they suddenly vanished and fled? or has Saturn devoured his own children? or was the appearance indeed fraud and illusions, with which the glasses have for so long mocked me and many others who have observed with me? ... The shortness of time, the unexampled occurrence, the weakness of my intellect, the terror of being mistaken, have greatly confounded me.'But Galileo was not mistaken, and by the middle of 1613 he was able to announce that the lateral stars were reappearing. They enlarged more and more until, in 1616, he writes —'Its two companions are no longer two small and perfectly round globes, as they have hitherto appeared to be, but are now bodies much larger, and of a form no longer round, but, as shown in the annexed figure, with the two middle parts obscured, that is to say, two very dark triangular-like spaces in the middle of the figure and contiguous to the middle of Saturn's globe, which later is seen, as always, perfectly round.'It was not until forty years later that Huygens saw and described these strange lateral bodies as really parts of a ring which girdles the equator or Saturn...."— Extract from "The Heavens and Their Story" — Annie & Walter Maunder (1908).Note 1: The image of Saturn was taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope on 20th June 2019. Source: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (GSFC), M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley) and the OPAL Team. https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/2490/saturns-rings-shine-in-hubble-portrait/Note 2: Annie Maunder was an extremely talented Northern Irish astronomer and scientist, but faced immense misogyny in the field of astronomy for most of her career. Her husband campaigned with her to try to overcome the horrendous sexism that plagued astronomy in the late-19th century/early 20th century. See here for a brief overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_S._D._MaunderNote 3: Reprints of their book can be ordered here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/heavens-their-story-Annie-Maunder/dp/9353864739/