Who was the first to accurately describe the rings of Saturn as a disc around the planet in 1655?

Question

Question

This question was previously asked in

SSC CGL 2022 Tier-I Official Paper (Held On : 06 Dec 2022 Shift 4)

Answer 1

The correct answer is Christiaan Huygens.

Key Points

Humans have been fascinated by the planet Saturn for generations.
Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch astronomer, was the first to correctly characterise Saturn's rings as a disc encircling the planet in 1655.
Galileo Galilei, an Italian astronomer, had seen them when he first pointed his telescope towards Saturn in 1610, but his instrument was not strong enough to determine their real nature.
Moreover, Titan, Saturn's largest moon, was found by Huygens.
Four of Saturn's moons were found by Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini, along with divisions inside the planet's rings.

Additional Information

Hideki Yukawa
- In Kyoto, where he was raised alongside two older brothers, two older sisters, and two younger brothers, he was raised as Hideki Ogawa, his birth name.
- He eventually read Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu after reading the Confucian Doctrine of the Mean. Due to the fact that he "was not as outstanding a student as his older brothers," his father briefly thought about sending him to technical college rather than university.
Galileo Galilei
- Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei, frequently referred to as a polymath, was an Italian astronomer, physicist, and engineer who lived from 15 February 1564 to 8 January 1642. Formally known as Galileo.
- He was born in Pisa, which at the time belonged to the Duchy of Florence.
Giovanni Cassini
- Giovanni Domenico Cassini, sometimes known as Jean-Dominique Cassini, was an Italian (naturalized French) mathematician, astronomer, and engineer who lived from 8 June 1625 to 14 September 1712.
- Cassini was born at Perinaldo, a town close to Imperia, in the Savoyard state's County of Nice at the time.