NASA. This colorful cosmic rainbow represents a section of S - Lot 259

NASA. This colorful cosmic rainbow represents a section of Saturn's magnificent rings, four centuries after their discovery by Galileo Galilei. Saturn's rings were first observed in 1610. Despite using his newly-created telescope, Galileo was baffled by what he saw: he referred to the peculiar shapes surrounding the planet as "Saturn's children". Only later did Christiaan Huygens propose that these mysterious shapes were actually rings orbiting the planet. The data in this image, which shows the part of the C ring closest to Saturn on the left, with the B ring starting just right of center, were acquired by Cassini's Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph, or UVIS, as the spacecraft entered orbit. around Saturn on June 30, 2004. The variation in the color of the rings is due to differences in their composition. The turquoise-colored rings contain almost pure water ice particles, while the reddish rings contain ice particles with more contaminants.Saturn's large and complex set of rings is the best-studied in the solar system, but it is still not known how the rings formed. One suggestion is that they formed at the same time as the planet, and are as old as the solar system itself. Another idea is that they formed when icy matter was drawn from another body into Saturn's gravitational field, in which case the rings could be younger than the planet.Vintage chromogenic print. Legend on back label. 25.4 x 20.4CM with margins.