It appears that the second largest planet in our solar system, Saturn, has more interesting things in store. Just recently, astronomers found out that the planet's eighth ring is actually bigger than what was previously thought.

According to the latest discovery about Saturn, its Phoebe ring is so massive its 7,000 times larger than the planet itself. 

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The discovery is quite surprising since the dimensions and the size of the Phoebe ring have already been studied and described by astronomers and scholars. In fact, the previous data about Saturn's rings have already been put into textbooks and other materials, as per Daily Times Gazette.

"We knew that the ring was big, but we now know exactly how big it is!" lead author Dr. Douglas P. Hamilton, of the University in Maryland in College Park, said.

Saturn's Phoebe ring was first described in 2009 using NASA's Infrared Spitzer Space Telescope. An infrared telescope is necessary to view the ring because it is made of dark particles that absorb sunlight and are only visible in infrared light.

The mysterious ring reportedly got its name from its composition, which is primarily dust particles of only 10 to 20 microns in size formed from cosmic collisions of certain outer space objects against one of the planet's moons, Phoebe.

For the recent study, scientists opted to use NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) Telescope to view Saturn's eighth ring in its entirety, according to Huffington Post.

Based on the infrared imaging analysis scientists made, the ring actually spans 3.75 million to 10.1 million miles from Saturn. Before, the ring is believed to span 4.8 million to 7.7 million miles away from the planet.

"We're told in science that planetary rings are small and close to their parent planets - if they're too far away from their planets, moons form rather than rings. This discovery just turns that idea on its head - the universe is a more interesting and surprising place than we thought," Dr. Hamilton told Space.com.

Interestingly, scientists admitted that their new estimates are a tad conservative, adding that Saturn's Phoebe ring may accurately be 50 to over 270 times the planet's radius. 

TagsSaturn, Phoebe Rin, outer space, NASA, Science, Astronomy