HD Pictures & Clips: Saturn and Moons torrent

March 17, 2009:

Saturn's comparatively paper-thin rings are tilted edge on to Earth every 15 years. Because the orbits of Saturn's major satellites are in the ring plane, too, this alignment gives astronomers a rare opportunity to capture a truly spectacular parade of celestial bodies crossing the face of Saturn. Leading the parade is Saturn's giant moon Titan – larger than the planet Mercury. The frigid moon’s thick nitrogen atmosphere is tinted orange with the smoggy byproducts of sunlight interacting with methane and nitrogen. Several of the much smaller icy moons that are closer in to the planet line up along the upper edge of the rings. Hubble’s exquisite sharpness also reveals Saturn's banded cloud structure.


About the Object

Object Name: Saturn
Object Description: Planet with Satellites
Distance: The semi-major axis of Saturn's orbit about the sun is 9.5 ________________________astronomical units (A.U.) or roughly 1.4 billion km.

Dimensions: The planet (without rings) has a diameter of roughly ________________________75,000 miles (120,000 km) at the equator.

About the Data
Data Description: The Hubble images and videos were created from HST data ________________________from proposal 11956: K. Noll, Z. Levay, M. Mutchler, L. ________________________Frattare, C. Christian, F. Hamilton, and H. Bond (The ________________________Hubble Heritage Team/STScI/AURA). B. Januszewski (STScI), ________________________M.H. Wong (UC Berkeley/STScI), and C. Go (Phillipines) ________________________also helped with image conception, proposal ________________________preparation/processing and data analysis.

Instrument: WFPC2
Exposure Date(s): February 24, 2009
Filters: F439W (B),
F555W (V),
F675W (R)


About the Release
Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Release Date: March 17, 2009

Color: The image is a composite of separate exposures made by the WFPC2 instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope. Three filters were used to sample broad wavelength ranges. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic image.

In this case, the assigned colors are:

F675W (R) red
F555W (V) green
F439W (B) blue