Astronomy images are generally stunning, but at a talk recently I saw a picture that completely took my breath away. At first glance I thought it was an impression by a particularly good artist, but it turns out that nature is more than poetic enough to provide this image.

This is a mosaic of some images taken by the Cassini spacecraft which is currently in orbit around Saturn. Cassini happened to pass right behind Saturn, which completely eclipsed the Sun at a distance of 2.2 million km from the spacecraft.

The sunlight spilling past the Saturn's disk has illuminated its rings beautifully in a glow of pastel colours, revealing faint inner and outer rings which are normally invisible. Most poetically, within the left side of the rings, one can glimpse the pale blue dot that we call our home, almost insignificant in the splendour of the cosmos.