Hubble took a stunning new picture of Saturn, and it doesn’t even look real
Hubble has taken a new picture of Saturn that looks so strange that you might not believe it’s real. The picture is so clear that Saturn just seems to be floating in space. Which one is it?
This picture of the ringed planet was taken on June 20, 2019, when Saturn was about 1.36 billion km (845 million miles) from Earth. Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 was used to take the clear picture (WFC3.)
This is a beautiful picture that would look good in a gallery. (As long as the person in charge of that gallery was a space geek.) But it’s not just pretty; it’s scientific as well.
The picture is part of a program called Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL.) The goal of OPAL is to take long-term pictures of the gas giant planets in our Solar System so that we can learn more about how their atmospheres change over time. As part of the OPAL program, this is the second picture of Saturn taken every year.
Saturn always seems calm. Even solemn. But when you look closer, you can see that there is a lot going on. When we think of storms and gas giants, we usually think of Jupiter, with its large horizontal storm bands and, of course, the Great Red Spot. But Saturn is also a very stormy planet that has a lot going on.
We know that a big hexagonal storm in the north polar area of the planet has gone away because of the OPAL program. And smaller storms are always coming and going. Storm bands, which are mostly made of ammonia ice at the top, also change in small ways.
But some things have stayed the same.
The hexagonal storm that Cassini saw at Saturn’s north pole is still there. In fact, in 1981, the Voyager 1 spacecraft was the first to find this feature.
Most of the time, though, this new picture of Saturn from Hubble is just beautiful. Saturn’s beauty would draw you in even if you didn’t know anything about it.
NASA also released a version of the Hubble image with notes that gave more information.
NASA also put out a time-lapse video of images of Saturn taken by Hubble. It shows how some of Saturn’s more than 60 moons move in orbit around the gas giant. It is made up of 33 different photos taken on June 19th and 20th, 2019.
And also:
