15 Mind-Blowing Pictures Of Space

This close-up of Saturn was taken by its resident space probe, Cassini, and shows a glint of a rainbow bouncing off the bright rings.

The effect is due to the fact that the sun is directly behind the probe at the time it took the picture. The rainbow effect is actually created by the way Cassini takes its photographs. Rather than just pointing and shooting, the probe takes a series of exposures in red, green and blue and then comps them together to produce a true colour image.

The spot of light will have been moving across the rings as the different exposures were taken, the rainbow effect is produced when the red, green and blue images are combined, showing its movement across the sunlit rings at the three separate moments.