Recently a new, monstrously big ring was found around Saturn. That was big news in itself. But it raised a legitimate follow-up question: How could astronomers have missed it all these years? Are they blind? Well, yes, in a way they are.

We've known about those other, more famous rings around Saturn ever since Galileo and subsequent astronomers trained their telescopes towards our sixth planet. Even a cheap department store telescope can make out those beauties. But we were all using scopes that capture and focus photons of visible light. Those are the only photons we can detect with our eyes. There are many - I mean many - more kinds of photons out there.

We have all at least heard about gamma rays, X-rays, ultraviolet, infrared, and radio waves. They, too, are all composed of photons, the same tiny bundles of energy that make up visible light. But whereas our eyes have been designed to react to the photons of visible light, we are literally blind to all the others.

For the record, gamma, X-rays, and ultraviolet from space pack more energy than the visible light we receive and they are almost all stopped by our savior of an atmosphere. On the other hand, infrared and radio waves are all wimps as far as energy is concerned. The atmosphere stops almost but not all of those photons. All of the visible wavelengths, however, can make it through.

In order to "see" photons that do not make it through the atmosphere we have to send special telescopes above the atmosphere, into orbit. There the full spectrum of photons can be seen if our instruments, our "eyes," are properly designed to pick them up. That's why we have X-ray and ultraviolet and infrared telescopes up there now - to complete the full picture of what is going on out there.

I'll bet you can guess why we could not see the new giant ring until now. It is because we literally cannot see it from here. The Saturnian rings we all know and love are made of big chunks of ice and they reflect the sun's visible light magnificently. But this new mega-ring is made of a thin wisp of tiny dust particles. They only give off just the tiniest amount of infrared radiation.

Astronomers, for reasons beyond the scope of this article, had suspected the big ring to be there. But they didn't find it until they made visible that which was invisible by training the infrared space telescope, Spitzer, on where they thought the ring should be. And behold, it was there.

Modern-day technology is making it possible for us to discover the deeper beauties of the cosmos previously unseen. This is a new Golden Age of astronomy.