stsci_2023-007g March 23rd, 2023
Credit: SCIENCE: NASA, ESA, Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC), Michael H. Wong (UC Berkeley) IMAGE PROCESSING: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
Ever since its launch in 1990, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has been an interplanetary weather observer for keeping an eye on the largely gaseous outer planets, which all have ever-changing atmospheres. NASA spacecraft missions to the outer planets have given us a close-up look at these atmospheres, but Hubble’s sharpness and sensitivity keeps an unblinking eye on an ever-changing kaleidoscope of complex activities long after those missions have ended. Inaugurated in 2014, the telescope’s Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) Program has been providing us with yearly views of the giant planets. Planetary oddball Uranus rolls on its side around the Sun as it follows an 84-year orbit, rather than spinning in a more-vertical position as Earth does. Uranus has a weirdly tipped “horizontal” rotation axis angled just eight degrees off the plane of the planet’s orbit. A recent idea is that Uranus once had a massive moon that gravitationally destabilized it and then crashed into it. Other possibilities include giant impacts during planetary formation, or even giant planets exerting resonant torques on each other over time. The consequences of the planet’s tilt are that for stretches of time lasting up to 42 years, parts of one hemisphere are completely without sunlight. When the Voyager spacecraft visited during the 1980s the planet’s south pole was pointed almost directly at the Sun. Hubble’s latest view shows the northern pole now tipping toward the Sun.
This is a Hubble view of Uranus taken in 2014, seven years after northern spring equinox when the Sun was shining directly over the planet’s equator, and shows one of the first images from the OPAL program. Multiple storms with methane ice-crystal clouds appear at mid-northern latitudes above the planet’s cyan-tinted lower atmosphere. Hubble photographed the ring system edge-on in 2007, but the rings are seen at an oblique angle seven years later in this view. At this time, the planet had multiple small storms and even some faint cloud bands.
Provider: Space Telescope Science Institute
Image Source: https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2023/news-2023-007
Curator: STScI, Baltimore, MD, USA
Image Use Policy: http://stsci.edu/copyright/
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