Hubble image archive
Closeup of Quadruple Saturn Moon Transit
This close-up view of Saturn's disk captures the transit of several moons across the face of the gas giant planet. The giant orange moon Titan – larger than the planet Mercury – can be seen at upper right. The white icy moons that are much closer to Saturn, hence much closer to t...
- Date
- Jan 1, 2009
- Mission
- Hubble Space Telescope
- Archive ID
- hubblesite-images-2009-12-2513-image
This close-up view of Saturn's disk captures the transit of several moons across the face of the gas giant planet. The giant orange moon Titan – larger than the planet Mercury – can be seen at upper right. The white icy moons that are much closer to Saturn, hence much closer to the ring plane in this view, are, from left to right: Enceladus, Dione, and Mimas. The dark band running across the face of the planet slightly above the rings is the shadow of the rings cast on the planet. This picture was taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on February 24, 2009, when Saturn was at a distance of roughly 775 million miles (1.25 billion kilometers) from Earth. Hubble can see details as small as 190 miles (300 km) across on Saturn.
Credits
NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA);Acknowledgment: M.H. Wong (STScI/UC Berkeley) and C. Go (Philippines)
Image Details
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | Saturn |
| Object Description | Planet with Satellites |
| Distance | The semi-major axis of Saturn's orbit about the sun is 9.5 astronomical units (A.U.) or roughly 1.4 billion km. |
| Dimensions | The planet (without rings) has a diameter of roughly 75,000 miles (120,000 km) at the equator. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | The Hubble images and videos were created from HST data from proposal : K. Noll, Z. Levay, M. Mutchler, L. Frattare, C. Christian, F. Hamilton, and H. Bond (The Hubble Heritage Team/STScI/AURA). B. Januszewski (STScI), M.H. Wong (UC Berkeley/STScI), and C. Go (Phillipines) also helped with image conception, proposal preparation/processing and data analysis. |
| Instrument | HST>WFPC2 |
| Exposure Dates | February 24, 2009 14:25 UT |
| Filters | F439W (B), F555W (V), and F675W (R) |
| About The Image | |
| Color Info | The image is a composite of separate exposures made by the WFPC2 instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope. Three filters were used to sample broad wavelength ranges. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic image. In this case, the assigned colors are: Blue: F439W (B) Green: F555W (V) Red: F675W (R) |
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Image and source material are credited to the official mission archive linked below.
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