What are these lines? (Picture included)

[nhmllr]

We've all seen Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot picture, taken by Voyager
http://www.humanistsofutah.org/images/PaleBlueDot.jpg
My question is: What are those huge red, green, and orange lines?

[Nabeshin]

Essentially, these lines are artifacts resulting in the geometry of the situation, specifically the fact that the Earth is too close to the sun. The fact that the Earth happens to be lying in one is mere coincidence.

[russ_watters]

I'm not sure what that means, but they are lens flares.

We had another thread on the subject and I posted a photo I took with the same annoying lines: http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=462352&highlight=pale+blue+dot

[Radrook]

Those lines are Saturn's tenuous rings.


Excerpt:

The narrow tenuous G ring and the main rings are seen at the right.
The view looks down from about 15 degrees above the un-illuminated side of the rings.
Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this view. The image was taken by the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Sept. 15, 2006, at a distance of approximately 2.1 million kilometers (1.3 million miles) from Saturn and at a sun-Saturn-spacecraft angle of almost 179 degrees. Image scale is approximately 250 kilometers (155 miles) per pixel.
At this time, Cassini was nearly 1.5 billion kilometers (930 million miles) from Earth.
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/imagedetails/index.cfm?imageId=2279

[nhmllr]

Those lines are Saturn's tenuous rings.


Excerpt:

The narrow tenuous G ring and the main rings are seen at the right.
The view looks down from about 15 degrees above the un-illuminated side of the rings.
Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this view. The image was taken by the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Sept. 15, 2006, at a distance of approximately 2.1 million kilometers (1.3 million miles) from Saturn and at a sun-Saturn-spacecraft angle of almost 179 degrees. Image scale is approximately 250 kilometers (155 miles) per pixel.
At this time, Cassini was nearly 1.5 billion kilometers (930 million miles) from Earth.
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/imagedetails/index.cfm?imageId=2279

This picture was taken in 1990 by Voyager I...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot

[Radrook]

This picture was taken in 1990 by Voyager I...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot

Thanx. My mistake. Wrong photo.