This Hubble Space Telescope photo of Saturn was taken on October 22, 2023, when the ringed planet was approximately 850 million miles from Earth. Hubble imaging is so sharp it resolves a phenomenon called ring spokes appearing on both sides of the planet simultaneously as they spin around the giant world.
Hubble observes Saturn annually as the spokes come and go. Hubble’s crisp images show that the frequency of spoke apparitions is seasonally driven. Long-term monitoring show that both the number and contrast of the spokes vary with Saturn’s seasons. Saturn is tilted on its axis like Earth, and has seasons lasting approximately seven years.
Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC)
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This Hubble Space Telescope image of the asteroid Dimorphos was taken on December 19, 2022, nearly four months after the asteroid was impacted by NASA’s DART mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test). Hubble’s sensitivity reveals a few dozen boulders knocked off the asteroid by the force of the collision. These are among the faintest objects Hubble has ever photographed inside the solar system. The free-flung boulders range in size from three feet to 22 feet across, based on Hubble photometry. They are drifting away from the asteroid at a little more than a half-mile per hour. The discovery yields invaluable insights into the behavior of a small asteroid when it is hit by a projectile for the purpose of altering its trajectory.
Credit: NASA, ESA, David Jewitt (UCLA)
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Ever since its launch in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has been an interplanetary weather observer for keeping an eye on the largely gaseous outer planets, which all have ever-changing atmospheres.
(Left) The forecast for Jupiter is stormy weather at low northern latitudes. A prominent string of alternating storms is visible, forming a “vortex street” as some planetary astronomers call it. This is a wave pattern of nested anticyclones and cyclones, locked together like in a machine with alternating gears moving clockwise and counterclockwise.
The orange moon Io photobombs this view of Jupiter’s multicolored cloud tops, casting a shadow toward the planet’s western limb. Hubble can see Io’s mottled-orange appearance that ties into its numerous active volcanoes. This photo was taken on November 12, 2022.
(Right) Jupiter’s legendary Great Red Spot takes center stage in this view. Though this vortex is big enough to swallow Earth, it has actually shrunken to the smallest size it has ever been over observation records dating back 150 years. Jupiter’s icy moon Ganymede can be seen transiting the giant planet at lower right. Slightly larger than the planet Mercury, Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system. (This image is smaller in size because Jupiter was 81,000 miles farther from Earth when the photo was taken). This photo was taken on January 6, 2023.
Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC), Michael H. Wong (UC Berkeley)
Image Processing
Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
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Ever since its launch in 1990, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has been an interplanetary weather observer for keeping an eye on the largely gaseous outer planets, which all have ever-changing atmospheres. NASA spacecraft missions to the outer planets have given us a close-up look at these atmospheres, but Hubble’s sharpness and sensitivity keeps an unblinking eye on an ever-changing kaleidoscope of complex activities long after those missions have ended. Inaugurated in 2014, the telescope’s Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) Program has been providing us with yearly views of the giant planets.
Planetary oddball Uranus rolls on its side around the Sun as it follows an 84-year orbit, rather than spinning in a more-vertical position as Earth does. Uranus has a weirdly tipped “horizontal” rotation axis angled just eight degrees off the plane of the planet’s orbit. A recent idea is that Uranus once had a massive moon that gravitationally destabilized it and then crashed into it. Other possibilities include giant impacts during planetary formation, or even giant planets exerting resonant torques on each other over time. The consequences of the planet’s tilt are that for stretches of time lasting up to 42 years, parts of one hemisphere are completely without sunlight. When the Voyager spacecraft visited during the 1980s the planet’s south pole was pointed almost directly at the Sun. Hubble’s latest view shows the northern pole now tipping toward the Sun.
[left]
This is a Hubble view of Uranus taken in 2014, seven years after northern spring equinox when the Sun was shining directly over the planet’s equator, and shows one of the first images from the OPAL program. Multiple storms with methane ice-crystal clouds appear at mid-northern latitudes above the planet’s cyan-tinted lower atmosphere. Hubble photographed the ring system edge-on in 2007, but the rings are seen at an oblique angle seven years later in this view. At this time, the planet had multiple small storms and even some faint cloud bands.
[right]
As seen in 2022, Uranus’ north pole is now capped by low methane humidity and a thickening photochemical haze that looks similar to the smog over cities. Several little storms can be seen near the edge of the polar haze boundary. Hubble has been tracking the size and brightness of the north polar cap and it continues to get brighter year after year. Astronomers are disentangling multiple effects—from atmospheric circulation, particle properties, and chemical processes—that control how the atmospheric polar cap changes with the seasons. At the Uranian equinox in 2007, neither pole was particularly bright. As northern summer solstice approaches in 2028 the cap may grow brighter still, and will be aimed directly toward Earth, allowing good views of the rings and north pole; the ring system will then appear face-on. This photo was taken on November 10, 2022.
Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC), Michael H. Wong (UC Berkeley)
Image Processing
Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
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This is a composite image showing the Saturn Lyman-alpha bulge, and emission from hydrogen which is a persistent and unexpected excess detected by three distinct NASA missions, namely Voyager 1, Cassini, and the Hubble Space Telescope between 1980 and 2017.
A Hubble near-ultraviolet image, obtained in 2017 during the Saturn summer in the northern hemisphere, is used as a reference to sketch the Lyman-alpha emission of the planet. The rings appear much darker than the planet’s body because they reflect much less ultraviolet sunlight.
Above the rings and the dark equatorial region, the Lyman-alpha bulge appears as an extended (30°) latitudinal band that is 30% brighter than the surrounding regions. A small fraction of the southern hemisphere appears between the rings and the equatorial region, but it is less brighter than the northern hemisphere.
North of the bulge region (upper-right portion of image), the disk brightness declines gradually versus latitude toward the bright aurora region that is here shown for reference. A dark spot inside the aurora region represents the footprint of the spin axis of the planet.
It’s believed that icy rings particles raining on the atmosphere at specific latitudes and seasonal effects cause an atmospheric heating that makes the upper atmosphere hydrogen reflect more Lyman-alpha sunlight in the bulge region. This unexpected interaction between the rings and the upper atmosphere is now investigated in depth to define new diagnostic tools for estimating if distant exoplanets have extended Saturn-like ring systems.
Credit: NASA, ESA, Lotfi Ben-Jaffel (IAP & LPL)
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