[stormer]

"The fact that it had "other" characteristics out to the side was known since ancient times."

Source please.

The maximum theoretical resolving power of the human eye given a 5mm aperture and a light wavelength of 500nm (the wavelength to which the human eye is most sensitive) is 20 arc seconds; 1 arc second = 1/3600 of a degree. The maximum width of Saturn from earth is 40 arc seconds. It is conceivable that under perfect viewing conditions (i.e. no atmosphere) a person with flawless vision may be able to perceive something other than a disc, however those stringent conditions (esp. no atmosphere) most likely preclude anyone from having observed the rings of Saturn with the naked eye (even as "horns").

[muawiyah]

Your conclusion is based on the misapprehension that all humans have visual acuity that tends to the average, and that exceptions are few and far between.

Actually about 1 in 30 men have extra red cones. A smaller percentage have the extra red cones, and no green cones, and possibly no blue cones. Within that group there are those who have a far greater number of cones than the average.

Every now and then, in ancient times, when conditions were right, one of these guys would look at Saturn and notice that it had associated elements.

What you need to do is recompute everything assuming the observer has vastly superior eyesight in a much narrower frequency.

Galileo's telescope could resolve only 30X. It wasn't powerful enought to allow him to resolve the rings since he couldn't see the gaps. That didn't keep him from describing the rings as "horns". Which means, of course, that Galileo didn't really discover the rings ~ he discovered, instead, the "horns" that had been seen fleetingly through the ages by exceptional and rare individuals.

He could do this repeatedly, and that proved they were a real feature of Saturn.