This is the official House Crest of our son, Odysseus Luke Saturn Langston Lee Calvin Orion Fox Graham:
All nine of his names are represented:
Odysseus:
Odysseus ("Ἄρτεμις" in Greek) is a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the "Odyssey," which depicts his 10-year journey home after the events of the "Iliad" in which he also plays a major role.
Odysseus ("Ἄρτεμις" in Greek) is a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the "Odyssey," which depicts his 10-year journey home after the events of the "Iliad" in which he also plays a major role.
Odysseus was the husband of Penelope, father of Telemachus and Acusilaus, renowned for his intellectual brilliance, guile, and versatility, and is thus known by the epithet Odysseus the Cunning. Odysseus was the son of Laërtes, king of the Cephallenians, and Anticlea, the daughter of Autolycus and Amphithea. Laertes was also an Argonaut and a participant in the hunt for the Calydonian Boar. According to Homer and Pausanias Autolycus was the son of Hermes, the divine trickster and messenger of the gods.
Odysseus also plays a role in other works in that same epic cycle, the Epikos Kyklos, a collection of ancient Greek epic poems, composed in dactylic hexameter and related to the story of the Trojan War, including:
- Stasinus' "Cypria," depicting the events leading up to the Trojan War and the first nine years of the conflict, especially the Judgement of Paris
- Arctinus' "Aethiopis," depicting the arrival of the Trojan allies, Penthesileia the Amazon and Memnon and their deaths at Achilles' hands in revenge for the death of Antilochus as well as Achilles' own death
- The so-called "Little Iliad" by Lesches, showing events after Achilles' death, including the building of the Trojan Horse and the Awarding of the Arms to Odysseus
- the Iliu Persis, or "Sack of Troy," by Arctnus, describing the Trojans' reaction to the Trojan Horse, the sack of the city, the deaths of key Trojans and the subsequent punishment of the Greeks by Athena for sacriledge during the sacking.
- The Nostoi, or "returns," in which Agias or Eumelus describe the return home of the Greek force and the events contingent upon their arrival, concluding with the returns of Kings Agamemnon and Menelaus
- "The Telegony," by Eugammon, that tells an alternate ending for Odysseus, wherein he is killed somewhat accidently by his son by Circe, Telegonus, partially fulfilling Tiresias' prophecy in Odyssey 11 that death would come to Odysseus "out of the sea," i.e., from the poison of a stingray on the tip of a spear crafted by Hephaestus, but which contradicts the prophecy of Tiresias, who predicted the Odyssey 11 that a "gentle death" would come to Odysseus "in sleek old age." It's also weird in that after Odysseus' death, Telegonus marries Penelope, Odysseus' widow and Telemachus' mother while Odysseus and Penelope's son Telemachus marries Circe, who is Telegonus' mother and Odysseus' ex-lover. Only two lines of the poem's original text survive.
The majority of sources for Odysseus' pre-war exploits — principally the mythographers Pseudo-Apollodorus and Hyginus — postdate Homer by many centuries. Two stories in particular are well known:
When Helen of Troy is abducted, Menelaus calls upon the other suitors to honor their oaths and help him to retrieve her, an attempt that leads to the Trojan War. Odysseus tries to avoid it by feigning lunacy, as an oracle had prophesied a long-delayed return home for him if he went. He hooks a donkey and an ox to his plow (as they have different stride lengths, hindering the efficiency of the plow) and (some modern sources add) starts sowing his fields with salt. Palamedes, at the behest of Menelaus' brother Agamemnon, seeks to disprove Odysseus' madness and places Telemachus, Odysseus' infant son, in front of the plow. Odysseus veers the plow away from his son, thus exposing his stratagem.
Odysseus holds a grudge against Palamedes during the war for dragging him away from his home.
Odysseus and other envoys of Agamemnon travel to Scyros to recruit Achilles because of a prophecy that Troy could not be taken without him. By most accounts, Thetis, Achilles' mother, disguises the youth as a woman to hide him from the recruiters because an oracle had predicted that Achilles would either live a long uneventful life or achieve everlasting glory while dying young. Odysseus cleverly discovers which among the women before him is Achilles when the youth is the only one of them to show interest in examining the weapons hidden among an array of adornment gifts for the daughters of their host. Odysseus arranges further for the sounding of a battle horn, which prompts Achilles to clutch a weapon and show his trained disposition. With his disguise foiled, he is exposed and joins Agamemnon's call to arms among the Hellenes.
"The Iliad"
The story covered in Homer's “The Iliad” begins nearly 10 years into the siege of Troy (aka Ilium, hence "Iliad" meaning "epic of Ilium") by the Greek forces, led by Agamemnon, King of Mycenae.
Homer is believed to have written the Iliad and the Odyssey around 850 BCE — if he existed (Homer might have been a fabricated name to which various the oral stories were attributed) — about the siege 400 years prior, i.e., in the 12th century BCE, around the era of the Late Bronze Age collapse before the Greek Dark Ages.
The Troy in question is archaeologically Troy VI or VIIa, as Troy was built or rebuilt at the same location 10 times between 3,600 BCE and 85 BCE.
The Greeks are quarrelling about whether or not to return Chryseis, a Trojan captive of King Agamemnon, to her father, Chryses, a priest of Apollo. Agamemnon wins the argument and refuses to give her up and threatens to ransom the girl to her father. In turn, Chryses pleads Apollo to help him, so the offended god plagues the Greek camp with a pestilence.
At the warrior-hero Achilles orders, the Greek soldiers force Agamemnon to return Chryseis in order to appease Apollo and end the pestilence. But, when Agamemnon eventually reluctantly agrees to give her back, he takes in her stead Briseis, Achilles‘s own war-prize concubine. Feeling dishonored, Achilles wrathfully withdraws both himself and his Myrmidon warriors from the Trojan War.
Testing the loyalty of the remaining Greeks, Agamemnon pretends to order them to abandon the war, but Odysseus encourages the Greeks to pursue the fight. During a brief truce in the hostilities between the Trojan and Greek troops, Paris and Menelaus meet in single combat over Helen, while she and old King Priam of Troy watch from the city walls. Despite the goddess Aphrodite’s intervention on behalf of the over-matched Paris, Menelaus wins. After the fight is over, the goddess Athena who favors the Greeks provokes the Trojans to break the truce, and another battle begins.
During the new fight, the Greek hero Diomedes, strengthened by Athena, obliterates the Trojans before him. However, in his blind arrogance and blood-lust, he strikes and injures Aphrodite. Meanwhile, in the Trojan castle, despite the misgivings of his wife, Andromache, the Trojan hero, Hector, son of King Priam, challenges the Greek warrior-hero Ajax to single combat, and is almost overcome in battle. Throughout everything, in the background, the various gods and goddesses (particularly Hera, Athena, Apollo and Poseidon) continue to argue among themselves and to manipulate and intervene in the war, despite Zeus’ specific orders to not do so.
Achilles steadfastly refuses to give in to pleas for help from Agamemnon, Odysseus, Ajax, Phoenix and Nestor, declining the offered honors and riches; even Agamemnon‘s belated offer to return Briseis to him.
In the meantime, Diomedes and Odysseus sneak into the Trojan camp and wreak havoc. But, with Achilles and his warriors out of battle, the tide appears to begin to turn in favor of the Trojans. Agamemnon is injured in the battle and, despite Ajax‘s efforts, Hector successfully breaches the fortified Greek camp, wounding Odysseus and Diomedes in the process, and threatens to set the Greek ships on fire.
Trying to rectify the situation, Patroclus convinced his friend and lover, Achilles, to dress in Achilles‘ own armor and lead the Myrmidons against the Trojans. The first two times Patroclus launches against the Trojans, he is successful, killing Sarpedon (son of Zeus who participated in the war).
Intoxicated by his success, Patroclus forgets Achilles‘ warning to be careful, and pursues the fleeing Trojans to the walls of Troy. He would have taken the city were it not for the actions of Apollo.
The god of music and the sun, is the first one to strike Patroclus. After that first blow and in the heat of the battle, Hector also finds the disguised Patroclus and, thinking him to be Achilles, fights and (with Apollo’s help) kills him. Menelaus and the Greeks manage to recover Patroclus’s corpse before Hector can inflict more damage.
Distraught at the death of his companion, Achilles then reconciles with Agamemnon and rejoins the battle, destroying all the Trojans before him in his fury. As the 10-year war reaches its climax, even the gods join in the battle and the earth shakes with the clamor of the combat.
| "Hector and Achilles" is a 1923-1926 oil on canvas by Sascha Schneider |
Dressed in new armor fashioned specially for him by Hephaestus, Achilles takes revenge for his friend Patroclus by slaying Hector in single combat, but then defiles and desecrates the Trojan prince’s corpse for several days.
| "The Triumph of Achilles" fresco by Franz von Matsch |
Now, at last, Patroclus’ funeral can be celebrated in what Achilles sees as a fitting manner. Hector‘s father, King Priam, emboldened by his grief and aided by Hermes, recovers Hector‘s corpse from Achilles, and “The Iliad” ends with Hector‘s funeral during a 12-day truce granted by Achilles.
After the Iliad
The Trojan War has not yet ended at the close of the Iliad. Homer's audience would have been familiar with the struggle's conclusion, and the potency of much of Homer's irony and foreboding depends on this familiarity. What follows is a synopsis of some of the most important events that happen after the Iliad ends.
The Death of Achilles
In the final books of the Iliad, Achilles refers frequently to his imminent death, about which his mother, Thetis, has warned him. After the end of the poem, at Hector's funeral feast, Achilles sights the beautiful Polyxena, the daughter of Priam and hence a princess of Troy. Taken with her beauty, Achilles falls in love with her. Hoping to marry her, he agrees to use his influence with the Achaean army to bring about an end to the war. But when he travels to the temple of Apollo to negotiate the peace, Paris shoots him in the heel—the only vulnerable part of his body—with a poisoned arrow. In other versions of the story, the wound occurs in the midst of battle.
Achilles' Armor and the Death of Ajax
After Achilles' death, Ajax (Achilles' cousin and next in line for the title of Greatest Greek Warrior) and Odysseus go and recover his body. Thetis instructs the Achaeans to bequeath Achilles' magnificent armor, forged by the god Hephaestus, to the most worthy hero. Both Ajax and Odysseus covet the armor; when it is awarded to Odysseus, Ajax commits suicide out of humiliation.
The Palladium and the Arrows of Heracles
By the time of Achilles' and Ajax's deaths, Troy's defenses have been bolstered by the arrival of a new coalition of allies, including the Ethiopians and the Amazons.
Achilles killed Penthesilea, the queen of the Amazons, before his death, but the Trojans continue to repel the Achaean assault. The gods relay to the Achaeans that they must perform a number of tasks in order to win the war: they must recover the arrows of Heracles, steal a statue of Athena called the Palladium from the temple in Troy, and perform various other challenges. Largely owing to the skill and courage of Odysseus and Diomedes, the Achaeans accomplish the tasks, and the Achaean archer Philoctetes later uses the arrows of Heracles to kill Paris. Despite this setback, Troy continues to hold against the Achaeans.
The Fall and Sack of Troy
The Achaean commanders are nearly ready to give up; nothing can penetrate the massive walls of Troy. But before they lose heart, Odysseus concocts a plan that will allow them to bypass the walls of the city completely. The Achaeans build a massive, hollow, wooden horse, large enough to hold a contingent of warriors inside.
Odysseus and a group of soldiers hide in the horse, while the rest of the Achaeans burn their camps and sail away from Troy, waiting in their ships behind a nearby island.
The next morning, the Trojans peer down from the ramparts of their wall and discover the gigantic, mysterious horse. They also discover a lone Achaean soldier named Sinon, whom they take prisoner. As instructed by Odysseus, Sinon tells the Trojans that the Achaeans have incurred the wrath of Athena for the theft of the Palladium. They have left Sinon as a sacrifice to the goddess and constructed the horse as a gift to soothe her temper. Sinon explains that the Achaeans left the horse before the Trojan gates in the hopes that the Trojans would destroy it and thereby earn the wrath of Athena.
Believing Sinon's story, the Trojans wheel the massive horse into the city as a tribute to Athena. That night, Odysseus and his men slip out of the horse, kill the Trojan guards, and fling open the gates of Troy to the Achaean army, which has meanwhile approached the city again. Having at last penetrated the wall, the Achaeans massacre the citizens of Troy, plunder the city's riches, and burn the buildings to the ground. All of the Trojan men are killed except for a small group led by Aeneas, who escapes. Helen, whose loyalties have shifted back to the Achaeans since Paris's death, returns to Menelaus, and the Achaeans at last set sail for home.
After the War
The fates of many of the Iliad's heroes after the war occupy an important space in Greek mythology. Odysseus, as foretold, spends ten years trying to return to Ithaca, and his adventures form the subject of Homer's other great epic, the Odyssey. Helen and Menelaus have a long and dangerous voyage back to their home in Sparta, with a long stay in Egypt.
In the Odyssey, Telemachus travels to Sparta in search of his father, Odysseus, and finds Helen and Menelaus celebrating the marriage of their daughter, Hermione.
Agamemnon, who has taken Priam's daughter Cassandra as a slave, returns home to his wife, Clytemnestra, and his kingdom, Mycenae. Ever since Agamemnon's sacrifice of Iphigeneia at the altar of Athena, however, Clytemnestra has nurtured a vast resentment toward her husband. She has taken a man named Aegisthus as her lover, and upon Agamemnon's return, the lovers murder Agamemnon in his bath and kill Cassandra as well.
This story is the subject of Aeschylus's play Agamemnon.
Meanwhile, Aeneas, the only great Trojan warrior to survive the fall of Troy, wanders for many years, searching for a new home for his surviving fellow citizens. His adventures are recounted in Virgil's epic Aeneid.
"The Odyssey"
Ten years after the Fall of Troy, and 20 years after the Greek hero Odysseus first set out from his home in Ithaca to fight with the other Greeks against the Trojans, Odysseus’ son Telemachus and his wife Penelope are beset with over a hundred suitors who are trying to persuade Penelope that her husband is dead and that she should marry one of them.
Encouraged by the goddess Athena (Odysseus’ protector), Telemachus sets out to look for his father, visiting some of Odysseus’ erstwhile companions such as Nestor, the king of Pylos; Menelaus, the king of Sparta; and Helen, whose abduction prompted the Trojan War. They receive him sumptuously and recount the ending of the Trojan War, including the story of the wooden horse. Menelaus tells Telemachus that he has heard that Odysseus is being held captive by the nymph Calypso.
The scene then changes to Calypso’s island Ogygia, thought to be modern-day Gozo in the Maltese archipelago, where Odysseus has spent seven years in captivity.
Calypso is finally persuaded to release him by Hermes and Zeus, but Odysseus’ makeshift boat is wrecked by his nemesis Poseidon, and he swims ashore onto an island.
He is found by the young Nausicaa and her handmaidens and is made welcome by King Alcinous and Queen Arete of the Phaeacians, and begins to tell the amazing story of his return from Troy.
| “Odysseus and Nausicaa” by Pieter Lastman |
Odysseus tells how he and his twelve ships were driven off course by storms, and how they visited the lethargic Lotus-Eaters with their memory-erasing food, before being captured by the giant one-eyed cyclops Polyphemus (Poseidon’s son), only escaping after he blinded the giant with a wooden stake.
| "Odysseus And Polyphemus" is a painting by Arnold Bocklin |
Despite the help of Aeolus, King of the Winds, Odysseus and his crew were blown off course again just as home was almost in sight. They narrowly escaped from the cannibal Laestrygones, only to encounter the witch-goddess Circe soon after. Circe turned half of his men into swine, but Odysseus had been pre-warned by Hermes and made resistant to Circe’s magic.
After a year of feasting and drinking on Circe’s island, the Greeks again set off, reaching the western edge of the world. Odysseus made a sacrifice to the dead and summoned the spirit of the old prophet Tiresias to advise him, as well as the spirits of several other famous men and women and that of his own mother, who had died of grief at his long absence and who gave him disturbing news of the situation in his own household.
| "Ulysses and the Sirens" is an 1891 oil on canvas by John William Waterhouse |
Advised once more by Circe on the remaining stages of their journey, they skirted the land of the Sirens, passed between the many-headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis, and, blithely ignoring the warnings of Tiresias and Circe, hunted down the sacred cattle of the sun god Helios.
| Scylla and Charybdis |
For this sacrilege, they were punished by a shipwreck in which all but Odysseus himself drowned. He was washed ashore on Calypso’s island, where she compelled him to remain as her lover.
By this point, Homer's flashback reaches the present and the remainder of the story is told straightforwardly in chronological order.
| Any maps of the Odyssey are estimates at best considering it took place in 1250 BCE, but this is a fun one. |
Having listened with rapt attention to his story, the Phaeacians agree to help Odysseus get home, and they finally deliver him one night to a hidden harbor on his home island of Ithaca.
| "Athena Appearing to Odysseus to Reveal the Island of Ithaca" by Giuseppe Bottani |
Disguised as a wandering beggar and telling a fictitious tale of himself, Odysseus learns from a local swineherd how things stand in his household. Through Athena’s machinations, he meets up with his own son, Telemachus, just returning from Sparta, and they agree together that the insolent and increasingly impatient suitors must be killed. With more help from Athena, an archery competition is arranged by Penelope for the suitors, which the disguised Odysseus easily wins, and he then promptly slaughters all the other suitors.
| Odysseus slays the suitors |
Only now does Odysseus reveal and prove his true identity to his wife and to his old father, Laertes.
Despite the fact that Odysseus has effectively killed two generations of the men of Ithaca (the shipwrecked sailors and the executed suitors), Athena intervenes one last time and finally Ithaca is at peace once more.
The Trojan horse, designed by Odysseus, is depicted here:
Luke:
Luke Skywalker was a Tatooine farmboy who rose from humble beginnings to become one of the greatest Jedi the galaxy has ever known.
Luke Skywalker, a Force-sensitive human male, was a legendary Jedi Master who fought in the Galactic Civil War during the reign of the Galactic Empire. Along with his companions, Princess Leia Organa and General Han Solo, Skywalker served as a revolutionary on the side of the Alliance to Restore the Republic—an organization committed to the downfall of the Galactic Empire and the restoration of democracy. Following the war, Skywalker became a living legend, and was remembered as one of the greatest Jedi in galactic history.
The son of Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker and Naboo Queen and Senator Padmé Amidala, Luke Skywalker was born along with his twin sister, Leia, in 19 BBY. As a result of Amidala's death and Anakin's fall to the dark side of the Force, the Skywalker children were separated and sent into hiding, with Leia adopted by the royal family of Alderaan while Luke was raised by his relatives on Tatooine. Longing for a life of adventure and purpose, Skywalker joined the Rebellion and began learning the ways of the Force under the guidance of Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, whose first apprentice was Luke's own father.
During the Battle of Yavin in 0 BBY, Skywalker saved the Alliance from annihilation by destroying the Empire's planet-killing superweapon, the Death Star. He continued his training in the years that followed, determined to become a Jedi Knight like his father before him, and found a new mentor in Grand Master Yoda.
While trying to rescue his friends on a gas mining station on Bespin, he confronted Darth Vader, whom he learned was in fact his father, Anakin Skywalker. In the fight, he lost his lightsaber as his hand was severed.
After his master's death on Dagobah, Skywalker built a new lightsaber.
Skywalker participated in the Battle of Endor in 4 ABY, during which he confronted the Sith Lord Darth Vader. With Luke's help, Anakin returned to the light side of the Force by killing Galactic Emperor Sheev Palpatine aka Sith Lord Darth Sidious at the cost of his own life, fulfilling his destiny as the Chosen One.
Following the Battle of Endor, Skywalker trained his sister as a first Jedi apprentice on Ajan Kloss, but Leia ended her training after the birth of her son and seeing his death as a result of finishing her knighthood.
With the Sith's destruction and the subsequent capitulation of the Empire in 5 ABY, Luke Skywalker traveled across the galaxy, searching for knowledge that would aid him in rebuilding the Jedi Order.
| Luke training Leia lightsaber combat on Ajan Kloss |
One of his apprentices was his sister's son, Ben Solo, who inherited the Skywalker bloodline's raw strength and potential for limitless power. As master and padawan, Skywalker traveled with his nephew and battle the knights of Ren, studied lost Jedi lore, and gathered others to expand their new order's ranks. In 28 ABY, Skywalker, glimpsing the darkness in his padawan, briefly contemplated murdering him, causing Solo to fall to the dark side like Vader before him and destroy his nascent order. The loss of his nephew haunted Skywalker for the rest of his life. In addition, the destruction of his temple and murder of all his students convinced him that the time had come for the Jedi to end. He therefore sought exile on the distant world of Ahch-To, having elected to live out his remaining days as a hermit despite the galaxy's pleas for help during the rise of the First Order.
His solitude was interrupted in 34 ABY, shortly after the fall of the New Republic, resulting in a chain of events that led Skywalker to play one last, momentous role in the conflict between light and darkness. Although he passed away into the Force, his legend would spread throughout the galaxy, rekindling a spark of hope in the enemies of the First Order. Before his death, Skywalker declared that the Jedi Order would not die with him, having trained a final apprentice: the Jakku scavenger known as Rey.
In 35 ABY, Skywalker's spirit communed with Rey during the final days of the war. The Jedi apprentice had exiled herself to Ahch-To, following in Skywalker's example. However, Skywalker urged Rey to confront her grandfather, the resurrected Darth Sidious. Believing he had been wrong, Skywalker told Rey that a Jedi's destiny was to confront fear. Following the Emperor's destruction, the spirits of Skywalker and his sister watched over Rey as she buried their lightsabers in Skywalker's childhood home on Tatooine and adopted the Skywalker name as her own to honor their legacy.
Luke Skywalker's second lightsaber appears in Odysseus Luke Langston Lee Calvin Orion Fox Graham's crest in the same location and same length as Leia Skywalker Organa Solo's lightsaber in Artemis Leia Aurora Claire River Song Éowyn Fox Graham's crest because they are twins.
Saturn:
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It only has one-eighth the average density of Earth; however, with its larger volume, Saturn is over 95 times more massive.
Saturn is a gas giant composed predominantly of hydrogen and helium. It lacks a definite surface, though it may have a solid core. Saturn's interior is most likely composed of a core of iron–nickel and rock (silicon and oxygen compounds). Its core is surrounded by a deep layer of metallic hydrogen, an intermediate layer of liquid hydrogen and liquid helium, and finally, a gaseous outer layer. Saturn has a pale yellow hue due to ammonia crystals in its upper atmosphere. An electrical current within the metallic hydrogen layer is thought to give rise to Saturn's planetary magnetic field, which is weaker than Earth's, but which has a magnetic moment 580 times that of Earth due to Saturn's larger size. Saturn's magnetic field strength is around one-twentieth of Jupiter's. The outer atmosphere is generally bland and lacking in contrast, although long-lived features can appear. Wind speeds on Saturn can reach 1,800 km/h (1,100 mph; 500 m/s), higher than on Jupiter but not as high as on Neptune.
Saturn's rotation causes it to have the shape of an oblate spheroid; that is, it is flattened at the poles and bulges at its equator. Its equatorial and polar radii differ by almost 10%: 60,268 km versus 54,364 km. Saturn has an Aphelion of 1,514.50 million km (10.1238 AU) and a Perihelion of 1,352.55 million km (9.0412 AU).
Saturn has a hot interior, reaching 11,700 °C at its core, and radiates 2.5 times more energy into space than it receives from the Sun. Jupiter's thermal energy is generated by the Kelvin–Helmholtz mechanism of slow gravitational compression, but such a process alone may not be sufficient to explain heat production for Saturn, because it is less massive.
A persisting hexagonal wave pattern around the north polar vortex in the atmosphere at about 78°N was first noted in the Voyager images. The sides of the hexagon are each about 14,500 km (9,000 mi) long, longer than the diameter of the Earth. The entire structure rotates with a period of 10h 39m 24s (the same period as that of the planet's radio emissions) which is assumed to be equal to the period of rotation of Saturn's interior. The hexagonal feature does not shift in longitude like the other clouds in the visible atmosphere. The pattern's origin is a matter of much speculation. Most scientists think it is a standing wave pattern in the atmosphere. Polygonal shapes have been replicated in the laboratory through differential rotation of fluids.
The rings of Saturn are the most extensive ring system of any planet in the Solar System. They consist of countless small particles, ranging in size from micrometers to meters, that orbit around Saturn. The ring particles are made almost entirely of water ice, with a trace component of rocky material. There is still no consensus as to their mechanism of formation. Although theoretical models indicated that the rings were likely to have formed early in the Solar System's history, newer data from Cassini suggested they formed relatively late.
Although reflection from the rings increases Saturn's brightness, they are not visible from Earth with unaided vision. In 1610, the year after Galileo Galilei turned a telescope to the sky, he became the first person to observe Saturn's rings, though he could not see them well enough to discern their true nature.
The dense main rings extend from 7,000 km (4,300 mi) to 80,000 km (50,000 mi) away from Saturn's equator, whose radius is 60,300 km (37,500 mi). Although the largest gaps in the rings, such as the Cassini Division and Encke Gap, can be seen from Earth, the Voyager spacecraft discovered that the rings have an intricate structure of thousands of thin gaps and ringlets. This structure is thought to arise, in several different ways, from the gravitational pull of Saturn's many moons. Some gaps are cleared out by the passage of tiny moonlets such as Pan, many more of which may yet be discovered, and some ringlets seem to be maintained by the gravitational effects of small shepherd satellites (similar to Prometheus and Pandora's maintenance of the F ring). Data from the Cassini space probe indicate that the rings of Saturn possess their own atmosphere, independent of that of the planet itself.
There are two main theories regarding the origin of Saturn's inner rings. One theory, originally proposed by Édouard Roche in the 19th century, is that the rings were once a moon of Saturn (named Veritas, after a Roman goddess who hid in a well) whose orbit decayed until it came close enough to be ripped apart by tidal forces (see Roche limit). A variation on this theory is that this moon disintegrated after being struck by a large comet or asteroid. The second theory is that the rings were never part of a moon, but are instead left over from the original nebular material from which Saturn formed.
A more traditional version of the disrupted-moon theory is that the rings are composed of debris from a moon 400 to 600 km in diameter, slightly larger than Mimas. The last time there were collisions large enough to be likely to disrupt a moon that large was during the Late Heavy Bombardment some four billion years ago.
Saturn has 53 known moons with an additional 29 moons awaiting confirmation of their discovery—that is a total of 82 moons. One moon, Titan, comprises more t
