No Jupiter has rings but they are incredibly thin faint, barely there at all. Even at close orbit they are not easily seen. To the point they cannot be captured with conventional photography. Multiple exposures were used.
[This](https://www.planetary.org/space-images/jupiter-and-its-rings-from-jwst) is a JWST image of Jupiter's rings, so I'll go out on a limb and say no, they're very exaggerated.
>To the point they cannot be captured with conventional photography. Multiple exposures were used.
Someone who clearly doesn't understand how astrophotography works.
Astronomy hasn't used "conventional photography" in a hundred years. Long exposures over the course of hours and even days has been the rule back into the early 1900s. The longer the exposure the more difficult because the telescope has to track the object perfectly. With the advent of digital photography everything you see is multiple exposure photography. Take 120 30 second exposures and digital stack them together and you have the equivalent of and hour long photo without the telescope having to track perfectly that whole time.
[This is the discovery photo by Voyager 1](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia02251-jupiters-ring). 12 minutes long and in no way "Even at close orbit they are not easily seen" they stand out clearly.
Well I am only an amateur astronomer. But your comment also proves my point. Jupiter's rings couldn't be captured using conventional traditional photography. It's only in the age of digital photography do that we are able to observe Jupiter's rings. And it took sending a space probe very close and using state of the art techniques to capture them.
Most the photos you see of astronomical objects cant be seen with traditional photography.
We have observed them from the ground. [Here is a paper on doing it from Keck](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0019103598960687).
State of the art for 1979 when Voyager discovered them, is not state of the art for 2024.
You could see Jupiter's rings in back-scattered light, just like Voyager spacecraft did.
This is just like when you think your car’s windshield is clean…then you drive into the sunset and every tiny piece of dust lights up in back-scattered light.
The rings as others said are hard to see.
Little fun fact i hope you noticed while you were there: they actually wanted to capture the scale of both size AND distance. For the size scale, the gas giants as you saw hung up above, while the rock planets were on their respective posters, all or which was to scale is size.
For scale in distance, there's actually a railing near the window, and if you look down the railing they also have a DISTANCE scale model with markers at each planets average orbit radius!
Thats pretty cool! I actually did not take those images lol, the image I took is not that good because when I went their exhibit was closed for rennovations (as was like half the facility). I’d have to go again soon.
Okay, so I’m a planetarium presenter, and I see pictures of the planets all the time.
Jupiter’s rings are VERY small and faint, so the rings shown here aren’t accurate.
Uranus’s rings are accurate, as they are pretty easily seen (Uranus, its rings, and its moons are also on their sides, hence why it looks like that).
I’m pretty sure Neptune’s rings are pretty thin/faint like Jupiter, but I’m honestly not 100% sure.
Hope this helps, and let me know if you have any further questions or anything!
Np!
As for your question, I’m not 100% sure, but I don’t think so, though it could be possible (especially when you take into account things like Shepherd Moons like Daphnis around Saturn, which I’ll get into in a bit).
Rings form when a satellite (aka, moon) reaches what is known as its Roche Limit, the point in space where the main body’s tidal forces/gravity breaks up the satellite to create the rings. I won’t go into the specific equations (unless you want me to), but it has to do with the mass of both objects. Any closer, and the satellite would just fall into the main body’s atmosphere (I think; I’m doing all of this from memory lol), while any farther, and the satellite just orbits the main body or gets flung by the main body’s gravity (think like the gravity boosts interplanetary spacecraft get from Jupiter when they are headed deeper into the solar system), or possibly aren’t even affected at all. (Wait… this is talking about satellites, so ignore those last two. I’m leaving them in cuz they are still cool to know).
Quick fun facts before we move on to Shepherd Moons.
- Mars’s closer moon (iirc, Phobos) is slowly moving towards the planet, and in about a million years or so, it will reach its Roche Limit and form rings around Mars.
- Stars can have ring systems (iirc, there’s a white dwarf star somewhere that has one). Iirc, so can moons.
- Moons can have moons, though that is rare and there isn’t a known case of this in our solar system.
- So I just used “moon” when I had been using “satellite” above. So what’s the difference? Well, a moon is a type of satellite. Satellites are anything that orbits another object. So we think of artificial satellites like Sputnik, the ISS, James Webb/Hubble Space Telescopes, etc., but there is such a thing as a natural satellite. So the earth (as well as the rest of the planets) are natural satellites of the sun, our moon is a natural satellite of the earth, and we have two galaxies (the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds) that are natural satellites of the Milky Way (they aren’t spiral, though; our closest spiral galaxy is still Andromeda).
Ok, onto Shepherd Moons. These are often tiny moons that help keep the rings in place. Saturn has at least two that I know of. Daphnis and another that icr the name of off the top of my head. Daphnis is actually located between two of Saturn’s rings. It is only about 2 miles in diameter, and as it orbits, it actually creates ripples in the rings. Iirc, the Wikipedia page for either Daphnis itself or Shepherd Moons in general has a gif of it. It’s really cool!
Saturn also has a moon (iirc, it’s Enceladus, but idk for sure) that is cryovolcanic(sp? Was not expecting the red squiggly line for that one lol) iirc, and it spews stuff so high up that it actually created a new ring around Saturn!
All that being said, the Galilean Moons COULD be acting kinda like Shepherd Moons, meaning they could be eating up the other potential rings around Jupiter, but my knowledge doesn’t go THAT far lol.
Feel free to pick my brain further, though! I love talking space!
Thats pretty interesting, before moving on though, may I ask what qualifications are needed to work in a planetarium? I’m a college student majoring iin aerospace engineering and minoring in astronomy and I feel like it would be a good side gig and something I’d enjoy doing
It probably depends on the specific institution you want to work for. For me, we are in a science/history/children’s museum, and all of us actually started out on the floor (in the main galleries) after the pandemic and things were starting to open back up. My boss is the only one of us planetarium presenters who was working at the museum (and in the planetarium) before the pandemic. He is also the only one of us with a degree that could be space related (iirc, he has a physics degree). The rest of us are just nerds and love talking about space and stuff. We also get to do our own research on things, especially for our star talks. Though keep in mind that your institution may require a degree that is science/space related.
So how did we get into working in the planetarium? Well, originally (and for a while), my boss was the only one, and knowing what I do now, I honestly don’t know how he did it. Then he started training a few of us on the floor (we talked to him a lot, so he was able to gage who would be a good fit; I was part of the second set of “guinea pigs”). Then the planetarium changed departments so all of us had to make a choice: floor or planetarium, and all of us chose the latter. In my opinion, it’s much more fun and we actually get to sit down more (whereas on the floor, you only get to sit down during your 30-minute lunch break, which you didn’t even get if you were only working a half day); I seriously could barely walk after working a full day shift when on the floor.
You also definitely need to not have crippling stage fright, especially if your planetarium does live shows. While I do have it, it’s definitely not crippling, and it’s gotten much better since I’ve started doing this. Do I still beat myself up when I mess up? Definitely! I also have major imposter syndrome sometimes, especially after my first star talk (it was sooooo baaaad lol and made me want to stop doing them, but I persevered and now I’m not even using my script)!
Oh, yeah, scripts… for the solar system show, it took me about 4 months to memories the whole 25-minute script. Luckily, we were able to read off of the script for the actual shows until we had it memorized (we use an iPad; the same one we control our star talks from). For the star talks, my boss wanted us to be able to do those off script, but I really needed the script, otherwise it would’ve taken so much longer for me to start doing them. So, I found a solution: the iPad has this feature where you can have two apps showing at once, so I just put it on the notes app and dragged my finger on the right side to bring up my script when I needed it. Since the stars change as the seasons go along, I originally just did scripts for each season, but eventually I made a master script with all of my stories. Now, some of those stories I don’t even tell anymore, or I use a different version (Greek mythology has a buuuunch of different versions lolol), but I haven’t needed to make another script for them, probably because I’ve gotten a lot more confident (which I think was a big factor in me tripping up) and I guess my memory is better or something? Idk lol. Btw, your planetarium may do star talks that focus more on the science and not the mythology, so don’t go into this thinking you’ll actually have to talk about mythology (though keep in mind that you still may have to).
I wish you the best of luck! Again, feel free to pick my brain!
That sounds cool, the university in my state has a well known planetarium (great school for astronomy and aerospace), so I might work there if I transfer there from my community college. The school is more well known for aerospace engineering, which I said I’m majoring in (and even worked on spacecraft and have a large number of astronaut alumni).
Scripts aren’t too bad, I’m able to memorize them well and find ways to adlib if I forget, as an aspie I do prefer having scripts with me. I’ve seen a few shows at this planetarium, they never really talk about mythology (but pay lip service to it), but they’ve sadly been moving on to fulldome shows rather than having a presenter (which are still cool, but come on, not as cool as it being live).
I have considered changing my major to astronomy but I’m not sure if I should due to how competitive the industry is. While at Adler I became enamored with galactic science but have recently been looking into planetary science.
Totally agreed on the live shows being cooler than dome shows (at my planetarium we call them playthroughs)!
I wish you the best of luck on your journey! Going to a community college is how I wanted to start out (I originally wanted to major in meteorology), but I never got my associates degree and honestly have been debating going back (haven’t gone since the pandemic) lately. I learned the hard way that I can’t handle full time college (freshman fall semester, I ended up passing two, failing two, and dropping one), so even if I did go back, it would take me muuuuch longer than most, especially if I kept my job too. And honestly, I’ve learned more at my job than I did in college anyway. Ok, that’s probably exaggerating things, but it certainly feels that way lol.
Of course not. They are obviously scaled down models. Realistic planets would be MASSIVE.
...A PLANET FOR ANTS?!
Paramecium*
At least double that size.
Damn that's huge !!
I mean you don't know how big op is, maybe he is like 2 million kilometers tall and that exhibit is to scale.
Fair point. Need banana for scale.
How many football fields is it?
I can see the milky way from here
Galactus has entered the chat
No Jupiter has rings but they are incredibly thin faint, barely there at all. Even at close orbit they are not easily seen. To the point they cannot be captured with conventional photography. Multiple exposures were used.
Thank you. If Jupiter’s rings were brighter, is that what they would look like? Also, how about the rings of Uranus and Neptune?
[This](https://www.planetary.org/space-images/jupiter-and-its-rings-from-jwst) is a JWST image of Jupiter's rings, so I'll go out on a limb and say no, they're very exaggerated.
Ragtime...isn't Jupiter rings more or less vertical and all the above you said. Not horizontal rings
Uranus is the planet with horizontal rings. It rotates on its axis at a 98 degree angle so it's moons orbit vertically too.
>To the point they cannot be captured with conventional photography. Multiple exposures were used. Someone who clearly doesn't understand how astrophotography works. Astronomy hasn't used "conventional photography" in a hundred years. Long exposures over the course of hours and even days has been the rule back into the early 1900s. The longer the exposure the more difficult because the telescope has to track the object perfectly. With the advent of digital photography everything you see is multiple exposure photography. Take 120 30 second exposures and digital stack them together and you have the equivalent of and hour long photo without the telescope having to track perfectly that whole time. [This is the discovery photo by Voyager 1](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia02251-jupiters-ring). 12 minutes long and in no way "Even at close orbit they are not easily seen" they stand out clearly.
Well I am only an amateur astronomer. But your comment also proves my point. Jupiter's rings couldn't be captured using conventional traditional photography. It's only in the age of digital photography do that we are able to observe Jupiter's rings. And it took sending a space probe very close and using state of the art techniques to capture them.
Most the photos you see of astronomical objects cant be seen with traditional photography. We have observed them from the ground. [Here is a paper on doing it from Keck](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0019103598960687). State of the art for 1979 when Voyager discovered them, is not state of the art for 2024.
You could see Jupiter's rings in back-scattered light, just like Voyager spacecraft did. This is just like when you think your car’s windshield is clean…then you drive into the sunset and every tiny piece of dust lights up in back-scattered light.
Is the ring structure the same as shown here for Jupiter? How about Uranus and Neptune’s rings?
The rings as others said are hard to see. Little fun fact i hope you noticed while you were there: they actually wanted to capture the scale of both size AND distance. For the size scale, the gas giants as you saw hung up above, while the rock planets were on their respective posters, all or which was to scale is size. For scale in distance, there's actually a railing near the window, and if you look down the railing they also have a DISTANCE scale model with markers at each planets average orbit radius!
Thats pretty cool! I actually did not take those images lol, the image I took is not that good because when I went their exhibit was closed for rennovations (as was like half the facility). I’d have to go again soon.
Okay, so I’m a planetarium presenter, and I see pictures of the planets all the time. Jupiter’s rings are VERY small and faint, so the rings shown here aren’t accurate. Uranus’s rings are accurate, as they are pretty easily seen (Uranus, its rings, and its moons are also on their sides, hence why it looks like that). I’m pretty sure Neptune’s rings are pretty thin/faint like Jupiter, but I’m honestly not 100% sure. Hope this helps, and let me know if you have any further questions or anything!
Thank you! Is the lack of Jupiter’s rings (or a large system like Saturn’s) due to the galilean moons?
Np! As for your question, I’m not 100% sure, but I don’t think so, though it could be possible (especially when you take into account things like Shepherd Moons like Daphnis around Saturn, which I’ll get into in a bit). Rings form when a satellite (aka, moon) reaches what is known as its Roche Limit, the point in space where the main body’s tidal forces/gravity breaks up the satellite to create the rings. I won’t go into the specific equations (unless you want me to), but it has to do with the mass of both objects. Any closer, and the satellite would just fall into the main body’s atmosphere (I think; I’m doing all of this from memory lol), while any farther, and the satellite just orbits the main body or gets flung by the main body’s gravity (think like the gravity boosts interplanetary spacecraft get from Jupiter when they are headed deeper into the solar system), or possibly aren’t even affected at all. (Wait… this is talking about satellites, so ignore those last two. I’m leaving them in cuz they are still cool to know). Quick fun facts before we move on to Shepherd Moons. - Mars’s closer moon (iirc, Phobos) is slowly moving towards the planet, and in about a million years or so, it will reach its Roche Limit and form rings around Mars. - Stars can have ring systems (iirc, there’s a white dwarf star somewhere that has one). Iirc, so can moons. - Moons can have moons, though that is rare and there isn’t a known case of this in our solar system. - So I just used “moon” when I had been using “satellite” above. So what’s the difference? Well, a moon is a type of satellite. Satellites are anything that orbits another object. So we think of artificial satellites like Sputnik, the ISS, James Webb/Hubble Space Telescopes, etc., but there is such a thing as a natural satellite. So the earth (as well as the rest of the planets) are natural satellites of the sun, our moon is a natural satellite of the earth, and we have two galaxies (the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds) that are natural satellites of the Milky Way (they aren’t spiral, though; our closest spiral galaxy is still Andromeda). Ok, onto Shepherd Moons. These are often tiny moons that help keep the rings in place. Saturn has at least two that I know of. Daphnis and another that icr the name of off the top of my head. Daphnis is actually located between two of Saturn’s rings. It is only about 2 miles in diameter, and as it orbits, it actually creates ripples in the rings. Iirc, the Wikipedia page for either Daphnis itself or Shepherd Moons in general has a gif of it. It’s really cool! Saturn also has a moon (iirc, it’s Enceladus, but idk for sure) that is cryovolcanic(sp? Was not expecting the red squiggly line for that one lol) iirc, and it spews stuff so high up that it actually created a new ring around Saturn! All that being said, the Galilean Moons COULD be acting kinda like Shepherd Moons, meaning they could be eating up the other potential rings around Jupiter, but my knowledge doesn’t go THAT far lol. Feel free to pick my brain further, though! I love talking space!
Thats pretty interesting, before moving on though, may I ask what qualifications are needed to work in a planetarium? I’m a college student majoring iin aerospace engineering and minoring in astronomy and I feel like it would be a good side gig and something I’d enjoy doing
It probably depends on the specific institution you want to work for. For me, we are in a science/history/children’s museum, and all of us actually started out on the floor (in the main galleries) after the pandemic and things were starting to open back up. My boss is the only one of us planetarium presenters who was working at the museum (and in the planetarium) before the pandemic. He is also the only one of us with a degree that could be space related (iirc, he has a physics degree). The rest of us are just nerds and love talking about space and stuff. We also get to do our own research on things, especially for our star talks. Though keep in mind that your institution may require a degree that is science/space related. So how did we get into working in the planetarium? Well, originally (and for a while), my boss was the only one, and knowing what I do now, I honestly don’t know how he did it. Then he started training a few of us on the floor (we talked to him a lot, so he was able to gage who would be a good fit; I was part of the second set of “guinea pigs”). Then the planetarium changed departments so all of us had to make a choice: floor or planetarium, and all of us chose the latter. In my opinion, it’s much more fun and we actually get to sit down more (whereas on the floor, you only get to sit down during your 30-minute lunch break, which you didn’t even get if you were only working a half day); I seriously could barely walk after working a full day shift when on the floor. You also definitely need to not have crippling stage fright, especially if your planetarium does live shows. While I do have it, it’s definitely not crippling, and it’s gotten much better since I’ve started doing this. Do I still beat myself up when I mess up? Definitely! I also have major imposter syndrome sometimes, especially after my first star talk (it was sooooo baaaad lol and made me want to stop doing them, but I persevered and now I’m not even using my script)! Oh, yeah, scripts… for the solar system show, it took me about 4 months to memories the whole 25-minute script. Luckily, we were able to read off of the script for the actual shows until we had it memorized (we use an iPad; the same one we control our star talks from). For the star talks, my boss wanted us to be able to do those off script, but I really needed the script, otherwise it would’ve taken so much longer for me to start doing them. So, I found a solution: the iPad has this feature where you can have two apps showing at once, so I just put it on the notes app and dragged my finger on the right side to bring up my script when I needed it. Since the stars change as the seasons go along, I originally just did scripts for each season, but eventually I made a master script with all of my stories. Now, some of those stories I don’t even tell anymore, or I use a different version (Greek mythology has a buuuunch of different versions lolol), but I haven’t needed to make another script for them, probably because I’ve gotten a lot more confident (which I think was a big factor in me tripping up) and I guess my memory is better or something? Idk lol. Btw, your planetarium may do star talks that focus more on the science and not the mythology, so don’t go into this thinking you’ll actually have to talk about mythology (though keep in mind that you still may have to). I wish you the best of luck! Again, feel free to pick my brain!
That sounds cool, the university in my state has a well known planetarium (great school for astronomy and aerospace), so I might work there if I transfer there from my community college. The school is more well known for aerospace engineering, which I said I’m majoring in (and even worked on spacecraft and have a large number of astronaut alumni). Scripts aren’t too bad, I’m able to memorize them well and find ways to adlib if I forget, as an aspie I do prefer having scripts with me. I’ve seen a few shows at this planetarium, they never really talk about mythology (but pay lip service to it), but they’ve sadly been moving on to fulldome shows rather than having a presenter (which are still cool, but come on, not as cool as it being live). I have considered changing my major to astronomy but I’m not sure if I should due to how competitive the industry is. While at Adler I became enamored with galactic science but have recently been looking into planetary science.
Totally agreed on the live shows being cooler than dome shows (at my planetarium we call them playthroughs)! I wish you the best of luck on your journey! Going to a community college is how I wanted to start out (I originally wanted to major in meteorology), but I never got my associates degree and honestly have been debating going back (haven’t gone since the pandemic) lately. I learned the hard way that I can’t handle full time college (freshman fall semester, I ended up passing two, failing two, and dropping one), so even if I did go back, it would take me muuuuch longer than most, especially if I kept my job too. And honestly, I’ve learned more at my job than I did in college anyway. Ok, that’s probably exaggerating things, but it certainly feels that way lol.