Rings View From Washington, D.C.

At 38 degrees north latitude, the rings would be beautifully displayed. Here we see them at sunrise. (Courtesy Ron Miller)

The rings around Saturn have been a subject of fascination ever since they were discovered back in 1610, when Galileo Galilei peered through a telescope and found them circling the sixth planet from the Sun.

Made up mostly of ice and estimated to measure as little as 30 feet in thickness and span hundreds of thousands of miles, have also long fascinated , an author and illustrator who specializes in science fiction and astronomy.

The author of more than 40 books, Miller's work has appeared in titles ranging from National Geographic and Scientific American to Air & Space and Discover magazines. The 65-year-old has also published books including Cycles of Fire, In The Stream of Stars, The Grand Tour, and The History of Earth.

Ron Miller

(Ron Miller)

Weather.com spoke with Miller earlier this week about his latest set of illustrations, which depict what life on Earth would be like if Saturn's rings circled our planet.

Q: What fascinates you about the rings of Saturn?

Ron Miller: What's not fascinating about the rings! Even seen through a small telescope they are magical. In a large telescope they are breathtaking... and seen from the they are absolutely magical. One of the really fascinating things about them is how ever-changing they are: seen from different vantage points, in different lighting conditions, etc.

I'm not the first artist to imagine what our planet would look like with rings... others have indulged in similar wishful thinking. For instance, I have an example from the 1920s, showing a ring arcing across the sky over London.

Q: In the illustrations, the rings are shown in brilliant white in some places, and darkened in others. Why?

RM: In order to create a visual continuity and comparison, I placed Saturn's rings around the Earth. Saturn's rings vary in density -- [they're] thicker in some places than others -- so they consequently appear brighter or darker accordingly.

These variations in density as well as all the concentric dark gaps in the rings are caused by the gravitation of Saturn's many moons. If the earth, with its lone moon, had a ring of its own, it wouldn't have as many gaps as Saturn's ring does.

Q: How did you choose which places to illustrate?RM: It's all matter of latitude. The lower the latitude -- that is, the closer to the equator you are -- the higher in the sky and the narrower the rings will appear. The further you go north, the more the rings will broaden out, but they will also sink further and further toward the horizon.

Any location between, say, 20 and 40 degrees north or south latitude would probably give you the most spectacular view. I wanted to show how the appearance of the rings would change as one moved from the equator to the Arctic, so I just chose locations at the right latitudes that would be both familiar and interesting.

Q: How did you decide where to place the rings?RM: They are the result more of a problem in perspective than mathematics (although perspective really is a practical application of geometry). Many years ago I worked out a series of drawings showing the rings as they would appear from different latitudes on Saturn... and applied them to these pictures of a ringed earth.

Since the only change was one of scale, all the proportions stayed the same. What's kind of cool is that the original data I used to figure all this out was found in a book published in 1865, in which the author worked out a series of charts allowing one to determine how much of the sky the rings would cover and what the planet's shadow on them would look like.

Below, Miller describes the illustrations:

(Ron Miller)

Here, along the Tropic of Capricorn at 23° south latitude, a 180-degree panorama gives an idea of what the rings might look like. The darkened area in the middle of the ring is Earth's shadow, shown at its fullest extent around midnight. Sunlight passing through the atmosphere leaves the edge of the shadow tinged with an orange-pinkish color.

(Ron Miller)

When standing on the equator, you are in the same plane as the rings. This means you would see them edge-on and they'd appear as nothing more than a very thin, bright line stretching from horizon to horizon.

(Ron Miller)

During the Spring and Summer equinoxes, the sun is in the same plane as the rings. At midnight, the earth's shadow would stretch across the ring, cutting it into thirds. The edge of the shadow is tinted orangish-pink as the sunlight passes through the earth's atmosphere.

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