Hubble image archive
Going, Going, Gone: Hubble Captures Uranus's Rings on Edge
This series of images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows how the ring system around the distant planet Uranus appears at ever more oblique (shallower) tilts as viewed from Earth – culminating in the rings being seen edge-on in three observing opportunities in 2007. The best...
- Date
- Jan 1, 2007
- Mission
- Hubble Space Telescope
- Archive ID
- hubblesite-images-2007-32-2175-image
This series of images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows how the ring system around the distant planet Uranus appears at ever more oblique (shallower) tilts as viewed from Earth – culminating in the rings being seen edge-on in three observing opportunities in 2007. The best of these events appears in the far right image taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on August 14, 2007.
The edge-on rings appear as two spikes above and below the planet. The rings cannot be seen running fully across the face of the planet because the bright glare of the planet has been blocked out in the Hubble photo (a small amount of residual glare appears as a fan- shaped image artifact). A much shorter color exposure of the planet has been photo- composited to show its size and position relative to the ring plane.
Credits
NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter (SETI Institute)Image Details
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | Uranus |
| Object Description | Planet |
| Distance | The semi-major axis of Uranus's orbit about the sun is 19.18 Astronomical Units (A.U.) or roughly 2.9 billion km. |
| Dimensions | Uranus (without rings) has a diameter of roughly 32,000 miles (51,000 km) at the equator. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | The Hubble image was created from HST data from proposals : M. Showalter (SETI Institute) and J. Lissauer (NASA Ames Research Center), and , and : M. Showalter (SETI Institute), R. French (Wellesley College), D. Hamilton (University of Maryland), J. Lissauer (NASA Ames Research Center), and P. Nicholson (Cornell University). |
| Instrument | HST>ACS/HRC and HST>WFPC2 |
| Exposure Dates | 2003-2007 |
| Filters | ACS: Clear, F330W (U), F475W (g), F606W (V), F814W (I) WFPC2: F450W (B), F606W (V), F814W (I) |
More Images From This Period
Downloads
Source
Image and source material are credited to the official mission archive linked below.
View on NASA.gov