If you like it so much, why not put a ring on it: the rings of the Solar System, from past to future part 1

In 1610, when Galileo turned his newly-invented telescope towards saturn, he observed what appeared to be 'ears' around it. After further observations of the planet, he concluded them to be 2 satellites orbiting the planet closely. Later, in 1616, he noticed the objects to have disappeared, making him confused. While it certainly was odd, he'd accidentally found an interesting formation- a ring system. Since his initial discovery of them in 1611, and their recognition as rings in 1655, rings have been found orbiting all of the other gas giants, including Jupiter. Recent visits by spacecraft have allowed us to learn more about these objects, how they formed, what they're made of, and what will happen to them. Here are the different planets' ring systems, including past and future ones.

The inner planets:
While none of the rocky planets have rings currently, it's likely that a couple of the planets had/will have rings at some point in their life.

Earth:
Earth (obviously) doesn't have any natural satellites or rings other than the Moon (as far as we can tell), and it's likely there weren't for a fairly long time. However, Earth's violent history says otherwise. Early in Earth's formation, a planetesimal the size of Mars collided on an angle with Earth, throwing debris from both planets' crust and mantle into orbit, leaving Earth slightly smaller today than it used to be. While this material eventually coalesced into the Moon, it stayed in orbit for a few million years, long enough for it to become a ring system. The total mass of the ring system was about 15% of Earth's. After a while, half of this mass left Earth's orbit or collided with it, and the other half became 2 moons. As the Moons' gravity affected one another, they slowly 'squished' into one another, with the smaller moon forming a thicker layer of crust on the far side of the current Moon. This was probably one of the slowest collisions in the history of the Solar System.

Mars:
While it's unlikely Mars originally had a ring system, it probably will in only 50 million years. This may seem like a long time, but, for comparison, the solar system is about 4,600 millions years old. Anyways, Mars's moon, Phobos, is the only moon that orbits faster than the planet itself. Because of this, Mars is slowing down Phobos's orbit, causing it to become closer to Mars by a centimeter per year. This means that by 3000 AD, it will be 10 meters closer. Eventually, as it spirals inward from its current distance of 9234-9517 Kilometers, it will eventually pass an imaginary location called the Roche limit. This area is the location relative to a body where any orbiting object will have such great a gravitational difference that the object will be pulled apart. For Phobos, it will pass the limit when it becomes closer than 5450 kilometers away, in about 50 million years. Once this happens, the satellite will be pulled apart into a ring around Mars. This just goes to show you that nothing in the Solar System is permanent.

The outer planets:
Right now, the planets with rings currently around them in our solar system are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Saturn's are by far the most extensive, with Uranus having loose rings, Neptune having even looser ones, and Jupiter having only a few, but fairly dense, rings, around it.

Jupiter:
Until Voyager 1 passed by Jupiter in 1979, the only known planets with rings were Saturn and Uranus.  The Voyager 1 images weren't very detailed, but later images by the Voyager 2 and Galileo probes showed the structure of the rings. These are the rings from closest to furthest from the planet:

Halo ring:
The halo ring orbits Jupiter the closest, at only about 100,000 kilometers. It's not very massive, and is the dimmest of the rings in the system, only visible in infrared. It's also the thickest, being nearly twice as thick as the second-most, the Thebe ring.

The Halo ring in infrared- the bright yellow line is the Main Ring. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Main ring:
The brightest ring in the system, the Main ring has a mass of 100,000,000,000 to 10,000,000,000,000,000 Kilograms, making it the most massive ring, too. Despite its mass, it's also the thinnest of any of the rings, only 6,500 kilometers wide. The ring appears to have a shepard moon, Adrastea. A shepard moon is a moon who, through its gravitational pull, keeps a ring bounded to an area instead of spreading out further. The only visible detail in the ring is a notch near the orbit of Metis.  Because of this apparent association, it has been named the Metis notch. Apart from this notch, the ring doesn't show much detail except a sharp decrease in brightness outside of it.

The Main ring. The faint dust visible inside is the Halo ring, and the dim-
mer part in the middle is the Metis notch. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Amalthea gossamer ring:
While the Halo ring and the Main ring form the main rings of the system, the Amalthea gossamer ring and the Thebe gossamer ring are very faint rings outside of it that appear to be more like haloes of material than 'rings' in the strict sense. The Amalthea gossamer ring is named after the moon Amalthea, which appears to be the shepard moon for the outer part of the ring. The ring is 53,000 kilometers wide, and 2,000 kilometers thick. It doesn't have any visible features, and is only visible at 5-10x light sensitivity.

The Gossamer rings, with the Amalthea ring's edge being visible as a slight
decrease in brightness 2/3 to the left of the image. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Thebe gossamer ring:
The faintest of the rings in the Jupiter system is the Thebe gossamer ring. Named after Thebe, it's fainter than all of the other rings, only visible at 20x light sensitivity. The ring is 97,000 kilometers wide and 8400 kilometers thick. Despite its name, however, Thebe isn't actually a shepard moon of it. The ring has been seen to continue past the moon. It's thought that the ring is formed by dust from impacts on Thebe, which are probably unusual, and therefore leaving the ring fairly not-dense.

An image of the rings of Jupiter, showing the gradual decrease in brightness further away from Jupiter.

Phewph! It seems that this ring article is taking longer than expected, so i'm going to split it into two or three parts. Tomorrow, I'll cover Saturn's ring system, and if I have time, Uranus and Neptunes. Stay tuned till then!