Scientists hypothesise that a small, wayward moon like one of these disintegrated 200 million years ago to form Saturn’s ring system. While observing the planet Hubble also managed to capture images of six of Saturn’s 62 currently known moons: Dione, Enceladus, Tethys, Janus, Epimetheus, and Mimas. To the south of this feature a string of bright clouds is visible: remnants of a disintegrating storm. Though all of the gas giants boast rings, Saturn’s are the largest and most spectacular, stretching out to eight times the radius of the planet.Īlongside a beautiful view of the ring system, Hubble’s new image reveals a hexagonal pattern around the north pole - a stable and persistent wind feature discovered during the flyby of the Voyager 1 space probe in 1981. The taken images show Saturn’s magnificent ring system near its maximum tilt toward Earth, allowing a spectacular view of the rings and the gaps between them. At this time Saturn was approximately 1.4 billion kilometres from Earth. Ī month before Saturn’s opposition - on 6 June - Hubble was used to observe the ringed planet. During an opposition, a planet is fully lit by the Sun as seen from Earth, and it also marks the time when the planet is closest to Earth, allowing astronomers to see features on the planet’s surface in greater detail. An opposition occurs when the Sun, Earth and an outer planet are lined up, with Earth sitting in between the Sun and the outer planet. In the last months the planets Mars and Saturn have each been in opposition to Earth - Saturn on 27 June and Mars on 27 July. However, Hubble has one advantage over space probes: it can look at these objects periodically and observe them over much longer periods than any passing probe could. Hubble’s high-resolution images of our planetary neighbours can only be surpassed by pictures taken from spacecraft that actually visit these bodies. Since the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope was launched, its goal has always been to study not only distant astronomical objects, but also the planets within our Solar System. ![]() Hubble took advantage of this preferred configuration and imaged both planets to continue its long-standing observation of the outer planets in the Solar System. ![]() During this event the planets are relatively close to Earth, allowing astronomers to observe them in greater detail. In summer 2018 the planets Mars and Saturn are, one after the other, in opposition to Earth.
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