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The Solar System

Planet Basics

What is a planetary ring?

A planetary ring is a system of huge numbers of small bodies—ranging in size from grains of sand to house-sized boulders—that orbit in a coherent ring-shaped pattern around a planet. The most spectacular planetary rings in the solar system orbit around Saturn; the part of the ring system visible to human eyes is more than 170,000 miles across, and less than one mile thick.