Galileo did not see the rings of Saturn through his telescope. While he was the first to observe Saturn in detail, his telescope was not powerful enough to resolve the rings.

Here's what Galileo saw:

* He observed Saturn as having "ears" or "handles" on either side of the planet. He described it as a "triple-bodied" star.

* These "ears" or "handles" were actually the edge-on view of Saturn's rings.

It wasn't until much later, in 1655, that Christiaan Huygens, using a more powerful telescope, was able to correctly identify Saturn's rings as a flat, thin ring around the planet.