SPACE.com Image Gallery: Cassini Explores Saturn's Moons

Cassini Explores Saturn's Moons

Ringscape In Color

Nine days before it entered orbit, Cassini spacecraft captured this exquisite natural color view of Saturn's rings. The images that make up this composition were obtained from Cassini's vantage point beneath the ring plane with the narrow angle camera on June 21, 2004, at a distance of 6.4 million kilometers (4 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 38 kilometers (23 miles) per pixel. The brightest part of the rings, curving from the upper right to the lower left in the image, is the B ring. Many bands throughout the B ring have a pronounced sandy color. Other color variations across the rings can be seen. Color variations in Saturn's rings have previously been seen in Voyager and Hubble Space Telescope images. Cassini's images show that color variations in the rings are more pronounced in this viewing geometry than they are when seen from Earth. Click to enlarge.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute