Cassini finds 'dirt' in Saturn's rings

The shuttle has sent images that show there's more ice toward the outer part of the planet's halos but there's also other material that scientists have called 'dirt'.

The international Cassini spacecraft has sent ultraviolet images of Saturn's rings that show there is more ice toward the outer part of the planet's halos, researchers said.

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Such information hints at the origin and evolution of the rings, according to scientists at the University of Colorado at Boulder who are involved in the mission managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Saturn's rings are mostly ice, but there is also other material that mission scientists have labelled "dirt."

Two images released on Wednesday depict the rings in shades of turquoise and red. They were made by a $12.5 million instrument called the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph, known as UVIS for short, that was built at Boulder. The instrument can resolve ring features that are 96 kilometres across.

The red indicates sparser ringlets believed to be made of particles that are "dirty" and possibly smaller than those in the denser, icier ringlets, which are shown in turquoise.

Researcher Joshua Colwell, a UVIS team member and ring expert, created the colour-enhanced images from the ultraviolet spectra recorded by the instrument when Cassini entered orbit on June 30.

Scientists want to know the composition and origin of Saturn's rings, which are named alphabetically A through E in order of their discovery. In order of increasing distance from the planet they are D, C, B, A, F, G and E.