Saturn's ring has space rainbows

Water-ice spouting from moon Enceladus is creating peculiar striped bands of light in Saturn's E ring

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One of the Cassini orbiter's standout discoveries in the Saturn system was plumes of water-ice erupting from fissures in the moon Enceladus. These ice particles make up the diffuse E ring surrounding Saturn. Now, a team fronted by Niels Rubbrecht, at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, has found something just as unique created by Enceladus's icy eruptions.

Rubbrecht and his colleagues were looking through old photos captured by Cassini during its 17th close flyby of Enceladus on 27 March 2012. They spotted distinct stripe-like features appearing around the moon in images taken by both the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) and the visible Narrow-Angle Camera (NAC) on the probe.