Saturn's rings to 'disappear' by 2025, but don't worry they will be back in full glory by 2032

NEW DELHI: Stargazers should enjoy seeing Saturn’s rings while they can as they will soon be 'gone'. Nasa has said the gas planet’s famous interstellar hoops are going to disappear from Earth's view in 18 months — but thankfully it is just an optical illusion.

Saturn's ring system stretches up to 175,000 miles from the planet's surface, making it visible to stargazers on Earth.
However, the gas giant will be tiled on edge with Earth, causing the massive rings to fade into an almost invisible line in 2025. Simply put, Saturn's multiple rings are disappearing, and in 2025, the rings won't be visible from Earth.
The planet’s tilt is currently angled downward at 9 degrees and will decrease to a barely visible 3.7 degrees in 2024. The angle will hit zero in March 2025.
Thankfully, we won’t have to wait long for the rings to return. The planet will rotate again, showcasing the other side of its rings, with the best display occurring in 2032 when the angle of tilt hits 27 degrees.
The rings have 'disappeared' before
It takes Saturn 29.5 years to complete one revolution around the Sun. As it circles the Sun, the angle of the Saturn's rings relative to the Sun varies by 27.3 degrees.
Twice during the 29.5 years, the rings are edge-on to the Sun and Earth. The last time the rings 'disappeared' was in September 2009 and before that in 1996.
Since Saturn's rings are so thin (mostly 90 metres in height), when they are edge-on to the Earth, they appear to disappear when viewed with a small telescope.
The Saturn ring plane crossings occur about once every 15 years.
Saturn's rings will actually vanish in a few hundred million years
Saturn has seven main rings and they make up a gigantic and complex structure. From edge to edge, the ring system would not even fit in the distance between Earth and the Moon, according to Nasa's science encyclopedia Solar System Exploration.
They are thought to be pieces of comets, asteroids, or shattered moons that broke up before they reached the planet, torn apart by Saturn’s powerful gravity. They are made of billions of small chunks of ice and rock coated with other materials such as dust.
Most of us assume that the rings are a permanent feature of the planet. However, according to some experts, they could be about 100 million years old.
And scientists say the rings have been eroding quickly, with large chunks falling towards the planet.
Dr James O’Donoghue, who is leading Nasa's research on the rings, said they are trying to figure out exactly how fast they are eroding.
“Currently, research suggests the rings will only be part of Saturn for another few hundred million years. This may sound like a long time, but in the history of the universe, this is a relatively quick death. We could be very lucky to be around at a time when the rings exist," O’Donoghue told Space.com.
Some astronomers estimate that they might vanish in 300 million years.