On this day in space: March 4, 1979: Jupiter's Rings Discovered

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On March 4, 1979, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft took the first photos of rings around Jupiter.

On March 4, 1979, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft took the first photos of rings around Jupiter. This was the first time anyone had seen Jupiter's rings.

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This photo from NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is the first ever to show the rings of Jupiter, which were discovered on March 4, 1979.
This photo from NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is the first ever to show the rings of Jupiter, which were discovered on March 4, 1979.(Image credit: NASA/JPL)

Even for a spacecraft out near Jupiter, the rings essentially invisible unless the cameras look at them edge-on or from an angle where sunlight shines directly through them.

Since Voyager 1 first saw the rings, other space missions like Juno and Galileo have continued to study them. Scientists believe that the rings formed by comets colliding with Jupiter's moons and kicking dust into the planet's orbit.

On This Day in Space: See our full 365-day video archive!

Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos. 

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