Saturn is perhaps one of the distinguishable planets in the solar system, thanks to its every prominent ring system. The sixth planet (if distinguished from the sun) and also largest planet in the solar system next to Jupiter, it is one of the four gas giant planets, with Neptune, Jupiter, and Uranus as the other three. The planet is actually named after Roman god Saturn, the god of agriculture and harvest. Saturn has a Greek god equivalent—Cronos, Zeus’ Titan father. According to Green mythology, Cronos served as the world’s ruler before Poseidon, Hades, and Zeus overthrew him.

This kind of history reveals one thing about Saturn: it has been known to exist for quite a long time. The question here, however, is this: when was it actually discovered?

The answer is rather surprising, considering how science has advanced today. Basically, no one really knows when—or when who, to be exact—discovered this solar system gas giant. Saturn has been known to exist ever since the prehistoric times. Of the planets to be first discovered, Saturn is the farthest. The distance gives Saturn the kind of mystique and mystery that made its way to numerous mythologies, even beyond the Roman and Greek ones. Saturn, for instance, played a huge part in ancient Asian cultures in Japan and China and Hindu and Babylonian astrology.

Further inquiries to the specifics of Saturn, however, took time. It was only during the 1600s when Galileo discovered that Saturn had rings, although he wrongly hypothesized that these were moons, Christian Huygens discovered that the “moons” were actually rings and that the planet had an actual moon. Later, four other Saturn moons were discovered by Giovanni Domenico. New discoveries were further fleshed out until the early 1940s.