What did Galileo Galilei observe about Saturn?

In 1610, Galileo Galilei became the first person to observe Saturn using a telescope. Due to the low resolution of his instrument, he could not discern the true nature of the planet's rings.12

Instead, Galileo reported that Saturn appeared to be a composite of three objects: a large central body with two smaller lateral ones that seemed to touch it, arranged in a row along the zodiac. Two years later, he was perplexed to find that the lateral appendages had disappeared, leaving the planet appearing as a single object; this occurred because Earth had crossed Saturn's ring plane, causing the rings to be viewed edge-on. Although he later observed the return of these "curious lateral appendages," he never deduced that they were actually a disk encircling the planet.3