Huygens Describes Saturn's Rings

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In his treatise Systema Saturnium, Christiaan Huygens finally explained the strange arms that Galileo had puzzled over decades earlier: Saturn was surrounded by a thin flat ring nowhere touching the planet. Telescopes had explained the most peculiar object in the solar system, and Huygens's elegant solution demonstrated how improved optics could resolve mysteries that had baffled the greatest minds of the previous generation.