[Figure 152: TWELVE PHOTOGRAPHS OF SATURN, MADE WITH A 60-INCH REFLECTING TELESCOPE. Photographs by the Mount Wilson Observatory.] The first individual to gain a glimpse of Saturn's rings was Galileo. To Galileo, whose telescope was not much superior to the field-glass of today, the planet appeared triple with two outer stars touching the middle star "like two servants assisting old Saturn to complete his journey." A few years later when he again turned his telescope upon Saturn, these attendant orbs had disappeared. "It is possible some demon mocked me," he exclaimed, and would look no more. "But for these news I know not what they be, Some one perhaps has lit on a new vein Of stars in Heaven:" --_Bailey._ Later the side features reappeared and became larger and larger, until they fitted the globe "like a pair of handles." [Figure 153: This drawing shows the rings of Saturn opened to their fullest extent, as seen on July 7, 1898, by Prof. E. E. Barnard through the 40-inch refractor at the Yerkes Observatory.] The drawings of those days look very strange to us now, for some pictured a bar run through the planet or a ball with ears. Fifty years later, in 1656, Huygens, with his 123-foot tubeless telescope, solved the mystery and proved the existence of a thin, disconnected ring, which was as astounding a phenomenon as the ears or bars or handles. Proof by direct observation that the ring was neither liquid nor solid but a multitude of very small bodies journeying close together, was made by Professor Keeler when he applied the spectroscope to determine the velocity at which the rings rotate. It was then discovered that the inner parts revolved more rapidly than the outer parts and the only way in which such a phenomenon can be explained is to accept the hypothesis that the rings are composed of separate independent bodies. Every 15 years the plane of the ring passes through the plane of the earth and hence it is seen edgewise to the earth. It then almost disappears, being so thin as to be seen only in the larger telescopes. [Figure 154: The Earth might "roll upon this ring like a ball upon a road." (Aspects of Saturn's Rings.) From Comstock's "Textbook on Astronomy," by permission of publishers, D. Appleton & Co.] Seen edgewise through the 40-inch Yerkes telescope, it is scarcely more than a streak of light "like a pair of illuminated needles piercing the ball on opposite sides." This is because all of these tiny moons which fly about Saturn are moving in the same plane. We obtained this edgewise view in 1907; in 1915 the ring was opened at its widest extent while in 1921 it was again almost invisible.