'Ringscape' in natural colour

The images that make up this composition were obtained from Cassini-Huygens's vantage point beneath the ring plane with the narrow-angle camera on 21 June 2004, at a distance of 6.4 million kilometres from Saturn.

The image scale is 38 kilometres 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 colour.

Other colour variations across the rings can be seen. Colour variations in Saturn's rings have previously been seen in Voyager and Hubble Space Telescope images. These Cassini-Huygens images show that colour variations in the rings are more pronounced in this viewing geometry than they are when seen from Earth.