Saturn, historical artwork. Engraving of the various ways in which the rings of the planet Saturn were seen by early astronomers. The rings were first detected by Galileo (1564-1642) in 1610, but he did not know what they were. They appeared to him as 'ears' or lobes on either side of the planet. It was Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) who first proposed that Saturn was surrounded by a solid ring in 1655. This artwork is from Huygens' book Systema Saturnium (Systems of Saturn), which he wrote in 1659.