Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Saturn from the Hubble


Here is a remarkable picture from the Hubble Space Telescope. In another life I was an astronomer and while you can see the rings of Saturn from Earth they are wavy and very hard to see -- photographs are even worse. Here the details are amazingly clear.


Saturn's comparatively paper-thin rings are tilted edge on to Earth every 15 years. Because the orbits of Saturn's major satellites are in the ring plane, too, this alignment gives astronomers a rare opportunity to capture a truly spectacular parade of celestial bodies crossing the face of Saturn. Leading the parade is Saturn's giant moon Titan – larger than the planet Mercury. The frigid moon’s thick nitrogen atmosphere is tinted orange with the smoggy byproducts of sunlight interacting with methane and nitrogen. Several of the much smaller icy moons that are closer in to the planet line up along the upper edge of the rings. Hubble’s exquisite sharpness also reveals Saturn's banded cloud structure.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"In another life"?? How many lives have you had??

Anonymous said...

I well remember when I got my first telescope as a kid, the rings of Saturn just fascinated me. Very beautiful.