Saturn’s Rings

Description

True-colour Cassini spacecraft image of Saturn’s rings. At upper right is Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons. The rings, which consist of particles of nearly pure water ice, have become contaminated with meteoritic dust over time. It is this dust that causes differences in the rings’ colours. The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft was launched in 1997 to investigate Saturn, its rings and its moons. This image was taken at a distance of 2.2 million kilometres from Saturn on 5 April 2005. (Photo by Science Photo Library)