Space Rainbow Question

Yes, icy rings can and do produce rainbows, but they are extremely faint. Here's a link to an example that took a lot of image enhancement to achieve: http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00002321/

The image isn't ideal as the exposure times mean that the rainbow and Cassini spacecraft moved during the exposure, but you get a good idea of how one might look.

This is a more famous example, but it's not real:
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/imagedetails/index.cfm?imageId=2796

The problem is that this is an imaging artefact (Cassini takes images one after the other in each of 3 different colours - but moves while it does so) - you could never see something like this. Any visual rainbow would be very faint due to the very low densities of rings / clouds in space.

If you've got any other space science questions, I'll try my best to answer as I took degrees in both Astronautics and Astronomy.

Thanks, guys.

I think that the rings of certain gas giants are partiallly made up of ice, so at the right angle of observation, the crystals might prism in the light of the nearest star.

If you were on a planet, perhaps. I don't know if it would how up against the dark backdrop of space in no atmosphere (here I'm thinking of a moon), but it could be a possibility.

My daughter prompted this question in my head: is it possible to have a rainbow in space? Well, the "rain" part, no. But say, if you had ice crystals, would their form disrupt the prism of light, or enhance it? Make it look like it's on crack? Anyone know? I don't have a story idea for this one, but the concept of a space rainbow cracks me up.