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)