x THE STARRY HEAVENS 395 
SATURN 
Next to Jupiter in size, as in position, 
comes Saturn, which, though far inferior in 
dimensions, is much superior in beauty. To 
the naked eye Saturn appears as a brilliant 
star, but when Galileo first saw it through a 
telescope it appeared to him to be composed 
of three bodies in a line, a central globe with 
a small one on each side. Huyghens in 1658 
Fig. 53. — Saturn. 
first showed that in reality Saturn was sur- 
rounded by a series of rings (see Fig. 53). 
Of these there are three, the inner one very 
faint, and the outer one divided into two by 
a dark line. These rings are really enormous 
shoals of minute bodies revolving round the 
planet, and rendering it perhaps the most 
