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Every fourteen or fifteen years, Saturn's rings become invisible to telescopes on Earth. The reason is that the planet is tilted on its axis by 27.4 degrees. Since the ring plane is titled at the same angle, as Saturn revolves around the Sun in its 30 year orbit, it gradually shifts its perspective, bringing the rings into visual alignment with the equator.
Saturn's main rings, including gaps, are approximately 416,000 kilometers wide, but are estimated to be a mere 50 meters thick, possibly as little as 10 meters. This means that even the most powerful Earth-based telescopes can detect only a thin wire extending across the planetary disk when they are edge on.
Modern astronomers postulate that Saturn's rings were formed in one of three ways. Some believe that they are the icy leftovers from the original nebular cloud out of which the planet condensed. Others suggest that the orbit of a small moon gradually brought it too close to the giant planet, whereupon it was torn apart by tidal forces. Still others believe that the rings were created when a moon was destroyed by the impact of an asteroid, leaving the fragments behind in their own orbits. Regardless of the way they were formed, they are theorized to be over four billion years old—almost as old as the Solar System.
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