The Hubble Space Telescope has spent the past 30 years orbiting 547 km (340 miles) above Earth. The old satellite has had a couple of problems in the past few years, but amazing photos of our cosmic courtyard have yet to be taken.
For example, earlier this month, Hubble flexed its chops from the Solar System and took a sharp image of Saturn 1,350 million km (839 million miles) away, a planet that can usually only be seen as a pinprick of light. with nudes. eye.
Right now, it’s summer in Saturn’s northern hemisphere, which, as we can see, means that its upper northern half is tilted towards us (and the Sun).
But it is not yet summer as we imagine it. The gas giant gets most of its heat from within, rather than from the Sun, and the average temperature is -178 degrees Celsius (-288 degrees F).
This image is not only striking, but it helps scientists learn new details about the planet. For example, there is a slight red haze in the northern hemisphere.
NASA believes this could be due to the heat from sunlight that changes atmospheric circulation or alters the planet’s photochemical haze. As you can see at the bottom of the image, the south pole is slightly blue.
“It is surprising that even for a few years, we are seeing seasonal changes on Saturn,” said planetary scientist Amy Simon of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
(NASA / ESA / A. Simon, Goddard / MH Wong, UC Berkeley / OPAL Team)
In the image you can also see two of Saturn’s 82 moons: Mimas, the small dot on the right of the image, and Enceladus, the slightly larger dot at the bottom of the image.
Hubble has made more than 1.3 million observations since 1990 when it was first launched, and most of those images are galaxies, nebulae, or distant stars, but it occasionally snaps a picture of a planet closer to home.
Saturn, for example, has had photos taken every year as part of the Outer Planet Legacy of Atmospheres (OPAL), and each photo appears slightly different.
These close-ups help scientists monitor our Solar System without costly, long-term missions to each of the planets.
That being said, though, some questions need a spacecraft to get answers, such as how Saturn’s incredible rings were formed.
“NASA’s Cassini spacecraft measurements of small grains raining down into Saturn’s atmosphere suggest that the rings can only last 300 million years longer, which is one of the arguments for an early age of the ring system.” said planetary scientist Michael Wong of the University of California. Berkeley
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