The rings were first discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610, using his telescope. They did not look like rings to Galileo , so he called them “handles”. He thought that Saturn was there separate planets that almost touched one another. In 1612 , when the rings were facing edge on with the Earth , the rings disappeared , then reappeared again in 1613, further confusing Galileo. In 1655, Christian Huygens was the first person to recognise Saturn was surrounded by rings. Using a much more powerful telescope than Galilie’s he noted Saturn “ is surrounded by a thin , flat, ring, now where touching”. In 1675, Giovani Domenico Cassini discovered that the planet’s ringsw were gaps. The largest ring gap was later named the cassini division. In 1859 James clerk Maxwell showed that the rings cannot be solid , but are made of small particles , each orbiting Saturn.