NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captures a rare view of the entire ring system of the planet Uranus, tilted edge-on to Earth. The rings were photographed with Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on August 14, 2007. The edge-on rings appear as 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 HST photo (a small amount of residual glare appears as a fan-shaped image artifact, along with an edge between the exposure for the inner and outer rings). A much shorter color exposure of the planet has been photo-composited to show its size and position relative to the ring plane. Earthbound astronomers only see the rings’ edge every 42 years as the planet follows a leisurely 84-year orbit about the Sun. However, the last time the rings were tilted edge-on to Earth astronomers didn’t even know they existed. The fainter outer rings appear in the 2003 Hubble Space Telescope images, but were not noticed there until they were seen in the 2005 images and the previous ones were analyzed more carefully. Uranus has a total of 13 dusty rings.
Object Name:
Uranus
Acknowledgement:
*Credit:* NASA [ http://www.nasa.gov/], ESA [ http://www.spacetel…], and M. Showalter (SETI Institute)
Fast Facts:
Technical facts about this news release: 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 4.5 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 10473: M. Showalter (SETI Institute) and J. Lissauer (NASA Ames Research Center), and 10870, and 11292: 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: ACS/HRC, WFPC2 Exposure Date(s): Various dates 2003-2007 ACS Filters: Clear, F330W (“U”), F475W (“g”), F606W (“V”), F814W (“I)” WFPC2 Filters: F450W (“B”), F606W (“V”), F814W (“I”) About the Image Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter (SETI Institute) Release Date: August 23, 2007 Orientation/Scale: Hubble Captures Full View of Uranus’s Rings on Edge: Unannotated [ http://imgsrc.hubbl…]
note:
*Image Type:*: Astronomical
note:
*Release Date*:August 23, 2007 02:00 PM (EDT)
note:
*Title*:Going, Going, Gone: Hubble Captures Uranus’s Rings on Edge
note:
*News Release Number:*: STScI-2007-32f
facet_what:
Sun
facet_what:
Earth
facet_what:
Camera 2
facet_what:
Wide Field Planetary Camera 2
facet_what:
Uranus
facet_what:
COMPASS
facet_what:
Hubble Space Telescope (HST)
facet_where:
Uranus
facet_where:
Maryland
facet_where:
Hamilton
facet_where:
Ames Research Center (ARC)
facet_when:
August 23, 2007
facet_when:
August 14, 2007
facet_when_year:
2007
UID:
SPD-HUBBLE-STScI-200 7-32f
original url:
http://hubblesite.o…
Release Date:
August 23, 2007 02:00 PM (EDT)
Image ID:
115140
Resolution Size:
4
Format:
JPEG
Media Type:
Image
File Name:
full_tif.jpg
Width:
654
Height:
1095

Tags: galaxy, Going, Gone: Hubble Captures Uranus's Rings on Edge, nasa, photo, space, star, Universe

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