The Spitzer telescope, from the American space agency, NASA, has discovered a new ring around Saturn, larger than all the others known to circle the planet.
The thin cluster of ice and cosmic dust particles is tilted 27 degrees in relation to the planet.
The new ring begins almost 6 million kilometers from the planet and extends for 7.4 million kilometers.
According to the NASA laboratory that carried out the tests on the discovery, it would take 1 billion Earth-sized planets to fill the ring.
Whitney Clavin, a spokesperson for the laboratory, says that the ring is very diffuse and does not reflect much light, which is why it was only discovered now, with Spitzer.
Despite being extremely cold, reaching temperatures of almost 200 degrees below zero, the ring releases thermal radiation.
The scientists who made the discovery believe that the material that forms the ring comes from one of the planet's moons, called Phoebe.
The discovery of the new ring could also answer long-standing questions about another of Saturn's satellites, the moon Iapetus, which has one side covered in dark material. The newly discovered ring orbits in the same direction as Phoebe, while Iapetus, the other rings and most of the planet's other moons rotate in the opposite direction. Scientists say material from the outer ring collides with Iapetus. "Astronomers have long suspected that there is a link between Phoebe and the dark material on Iapetus," said Douglas Hamilton of the University of Maryland in the United States, who worked on the research.
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