Rings

A few days before it entered orbit around Saturn, the Cassini spacecraft captured this natural color view of Saturn's rings, taken Wednesday, July 21, 2004, by Nasa. The image, released by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Thursday, was taken from below the ring plane at a distance of 4 million miles, NASA said. The rings are mostly water ice, which is white if it is pure. The different colors are therefore believed to reflect other materials, such as rock or carbon compounds, the space agency said. (AP Photo/Nasa, JPL, Space Science Institute)