Talk:Rings of Saturn

Discovery dates

The article currently states: The rings are named alphabetically in the order they were discovered:[32] A and B in 1675 by Giovanni Domenico Cassini, C in 1850 by William Cranch Bond and his son George Phillips Bond, D in 1933 by Nikolai Barabashov and Boris Semeykin [uk], E in 1967 by Walter A. Feibelman, F in 1979 by Pioneer 11, and G in 1980 by Voyager 1.

The source 32 does not have any dates or names for rings. This source says on ring D The D ring is also very tenuous, and is made of microscopic particles, so it's fairly difficult to see. I don't think it's been seen from Earth yet; it was detected by one of the Voyager spacecraft in the early 1980s, and confirms that ring F was discovered by Pioneer 11. This one (the best overview of ring D that I've found), states The D-ring's location near the planet, combined with its low optical depth, makes it nearly impossible to observe directly from Earth. Using images taken in 1969, Guérin (1973) reported a detection of material interior to the C ring around 70,000 km from the center of Saturn, but in 1979 Pioneer 11 did not observe any material in this region (Gehrels et al., 1980). For the ring E I'm still looking for a better source.

Does anyone know why the article currently says that the D-ring was discovered in 1933? Is it even possible? And what about other dates? Artem.G (talk) 18:55, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

The wording is an un-referenced add by Urhixidur on 24 March 2020. There is contradictory information (with reference) further down the article at "Physical parameters of the rings". There is further reference for the Barabashov and Semejkin claim here, PDF here. Maybe the claims should be removed from the "Huygens' ring hypothesis and later developments" section and added at the table at "Physical parameters of the rings" where the minutia of who discovered what can be expanded on. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 03:29, 26 January 2025 (UTC)