Lick
Observatory, Mt.Hamilton, California
W.
M. Keck Observatory,
Hawaii
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Lick
Observatory, Mt.Hamilton, California
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W.
M. Keck Observatory,
Hawaii
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Images of Uranus Taken during RPX
The rings of Uranus are shown here captured almost exactly edge-on to Earth. This false-color image was obtained by the NAOS-CONICA infrared camera on the Very Large Telescope at Paranal, Chile. It was taken at 9:00 UT on 16 August 2007, just two hours after Earth had just crossed to the lit side of the ring plane. We are peering over the sunlit face of the rings at an opening of only 0.003ð, an angle so small that the thin rings nearly disappear. At right, the region around the planet has been enhanced to show a thin line, which is sunlight glinting off the ring edges and also reflected by dust clouds embedded within the system. The pictures at left shows the planet and identifies four of its largest moons. One can clearly discern banding in the atmosphere and a bright cloud feature near the planetâÂÂs south polar collar, on the left side of the image. This is a composite of images taken at infrared wavelengths. The planet is shown in false color, based on images taken at wavelengths of 1.2 and 1.6 microns. The rings are extracted from an image taken at 2.2 microns, where the planet is darker and therefore the rings are easier to detect. Courtesy: Daphne Stam (TU Delft), Markus Hartung (ESO, Chile), Mark Showalter (SETI) and Imke de Pater (UC Berkeley and TU Delft).
Uranus-centered latitude of Earth and Sun during 2007 and early 2008. Earth crosses the ring plane three times: 3 May 2007, 16 August 2007, and 20 February 2008. The Sun crosses the ring plane on 7 December 2007 (equinox). Shaded regions indicate the times when the Earth and Sun are on opposite sides of the ring plane (i.e., on opposite sides of 0ð latitude), providing a rare Earth-based look at the unlit side of the rings. The date of our image is indicated. (Fig. 1 from de Pater, Hammel, Showalter, and van Dam: The dark side of the rings of Uranus, ScienceExpress Online 23 August 2007).
This series of images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows how the ring system around the distant planet Uranus appears at ever more oblique (shallower) tilts as viewed from Earth - culminating in the rings being seen edge-on in three observing opportunities in 2007. The best of these events appears in the far right image taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on August 14, 2007. Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter (SETI Institute)
The rings or Uranus were photographed with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on August 14, 2007. The edge-on rings appear as spikes above and below the planet. The rings cannot be seen running fully across the face of the planet because the bright glare of the planet has been blocked out in the HST photo (a small amount of residual glare appears as a fan-shaped image artifact, along with an edge between the exposure for the inner and outer rings). A much shorter color exposure of the planet has been photo-composited to show its size and position relative to the ring plane. Earthbound astronomers only see the ring's edge every 42 years as the planet follows a leisurely 84-year orbit about the Sun. However, the last time the rings were tilted edge-on to Earth astronomers didn't even know they existed. The fainter outer rings appear in the 2003 Hubble Space Telescope images, but were not noticed there until they were seen in the 2005 images and the previous ones were analyzed more carefully. Uranus has a total of 13 dusty rings. Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter (SETI Institute) HST images taken during ring plane crossing
VLT images taken during ring plane crossing