Which planets have rings?
In our Solar System, all four gas giant planets have rings: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
Saturn has by far the easiest ring system to see, in fact you can see it with any decent backyard telescope.
- Saturn's rings were discovered by Galileo in 1610.
- Uranus' rings were discovered in 1977 by American astronomer James L. Elliot.
- Jupiter's rings were discovered in 1979 by the Voyager 1 space probe.
- Neptune's rings were definitively discovered by the Voyager 2 space probe in 1989, although numerous previous observations had hinted at their existence.
It is thought that Earth once had a ring system. According to the prevailing theory of how the Moon was formed, an ancient collision between Earth and other large object (Theia) resulted in a rocky ring system that eventually came together to make the Moon.