Earth with Rings

All of our Solar System’s giant planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, have their own ring system. This is how Earth would look like with rings.   Credit: Kevin Gill/Flickr

Kevin Gill, a software engineer who performs science data visualizations for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, created “Rings Over Earth.”

Earth’s ring system, as it would appear over Los Angeles at night (top).  Credit: Kevin Gill/Flickr

These hypothetical views of a Saturn-like ring system around Earth, created using Autodesk Maya and Adobe.

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Earth’s Rings from New Hampshire. Credit: Kevin Gill/Flickr

“I made

[the pictures] out of a curiosity of how they would look after having done a few Saturn-related renders,” he said. “I rigged the camera, rings and Earth in Maya, placing the camera more-or-less where I indented the viewer to be (New Hampshire, Los Angeles, etc.)  I used Photoshop to composite the Maya rendered rings over photographs I had taken over the last year. Like the angles, the lighting is more-or-less approximate.”

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Earth and its hypothetical ring system, as seen from orbit. Credit: Kevin Gill/Flickr

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Earth’s rings, as viewed from the San Bernadino Valley. Credit: Kevin Gill/Flickr

via universetoday