Saturn, the sixth planet in our solar system, has been imaged by the Cassini spacecraft. This image, taken from a distance of 1.27 million miles (2.05 million km) from the centre of Saturn's rings, shows the subtle colours of the rings.

The Cassini spacecraft was launched in 1997 and reached Saturn in 2004, travelling 2.1 billion miles, or 3.4 billion kilometres. Until 2017, Cassini studied the gas giant and its moons, deliberately diving into the planet's atmosphere on this date and sending scientific data along the way.

Saturn is not the only planet with rings, but no other planet in our solar system has a ring system as complex and distinctive as Saturn's. The gas giant's rings extend 175,000 miles (282,000 km) from the planet and are composed mostly of ice and rock particles that can range from the size of dust to the size of mountains. Research suggests that the rings (and some of Saturn's present-day moons) may have evolved from the debris of two icy moons that collided and broke apart hundreds of millions of years ago.

Image description:

Saturn's rings radiate in small white-grey lines from lower right to upper right, some condensed, others distinct. The rings radiate from the right centre of the image.