File:Saturn HST 2004-03-22.jpg
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Summary
[edit]DescriptionSaturn HST 2004-03-22.jpg |
As NASA's Cassini spacecraft hurtles toward a July 1, 2004 rendezvous with Saturn, the Hubble Space Telescope continues snapping breathtaking pictures of the solar system's most photogenic planet. This latest view, taken on March 22, 2004, is so sharp that many individual ringlets can be seen in Saturn's ring plane. Though Hubble is nearly a billion miles farther from Saturn than the Cassini probe, Hubble's exquisite optics, coupled with the high resolution of its Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), allow it to take pictures of Saturn which are nearly as sharp as Cassini's wide-angle views of the full planet as it begins its approach. Of course, Cassini will ultimately far exceed the resolution of Hubble during its close encounter with Saturn; indeed, Cassini's sharpness began to surpass Hubble's when it approached to within 14 million miles (23 million km) of Saturn this month. Hubble camera exposures in four filters (blue, blue-green, green, and red) were combined into this image, to render colors similar to what the eye would see through a telescope focused on Saturn. The subtle pastel colors of ammonia-methane clouds trace a variety of atmospheric dynamics. Saturn displays its familiar banded structure, and haze and clouds of various altitudes. Like Jupiter, all bands are parallel to Saturn's equator. Even the magnificent rings, at nearly their maximum tilt toward Earth, show subtle hues, which trace chemical differences in their icy composition. Over two decades have passed since a robotic emissary from Earth last visited Saturn. This was NASA's Voyager-2 space probe, which flew by Saturn in August 1981. But ever since 1990, Hubble has filled in the gap of high-resolution Saturn imaging by tracking storms and auroral activity, and providing crisp views of the ring plane from various angles, as Saturn drifts along its orbit. Approaching Saturn at an oblique angle to the Sun and from below the ecliptic plane, Cassini has a very different viewing angle on Saturn than Hubble's earth-centered view. For the first time astronomers can compare equal-sharpness views of Saturn from two very different perspectives. The NASA image from http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2004/18/image/a has been modified by the addition of side panels. |
Date | |
Source | http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2004/18/image/a/ (direct link) |
Author | NASA, ESA and E. Karkoschka (University of Arizona) |
Licensing
[edit]Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse |
This file is in the public domain because it was created by NASA and ESA. NASA Hubble material (and ESA Hubble material prior to 2009) is copyright-free and may be freely used as in the public domain without fee, on the condition that only NASA, STScI, and/or ESA is credited as the source of the material. This license does not apply if ESA material created after 2008 or source material from other organizations is in use. The material was created for NASA by Space Telescope Science Institute under Contract NAS5-26555, or for ESA by the Hubble European Space Agency Information Centre. Copyright statement at hubblesite.org or 2008 copyright statement at spacetelescope.org. For material created by the European Space Agency on the spacetelescope.org site since 2009, use the {{ESA-Hubble}} tag. |
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Date/Time | Thumbnail | Dimensions | User | Comment | |
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current | 06:34, 15 July 2009 | 2,200 × 1,200 (234 KB) | WolfmanSF (talk | contribs) | version with side panels but without slant and upsampling | |
07:45, 10 July 2009 | 2,820 × 1,800 (247 KB) | WolfmanSF (talk | contribs) | Retain original version with side panels and slant, but with reduced upsampling. | ||
09:19, 7 July 2009 | 2,150 × 1,000 (143 KB) | Tryphon (talk | contribs) | Original size; the previous image was upsampled. | ||
06:16, 18 November 2007 | 2,980 × 2,048 (595 KB) | WolfmanSF (talk | contribs) | {{Information |Description=As NASA's Cassini spacecraft hurtles toward a July 1, 2004 rendezvous with Saturn, the Hubble Space Telescope continues snapping breathtaking pictures of the solar system's most photogenic planet. This latest view, taken on Marc |
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