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Friday, August 24, 2007

The Rings of Uranus Viewed Edge-on

 
The photograph and caption from SciencDaily says it all [Astronomers Get First Look At Uranus's Rings As They Swing Edge-on To Earth].
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))
As expected, Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy has much more information and lots of spectacular photographs [Yes, yes, rings around Uranus, haha]. Where does he get them?

1 comment :

lee_merrill said...

Well, neat, and it looks like they will have a long time to watch this, if it took four years to get in this state...