Outer Planets Rotating (Annotated)

OPAL Grand Tour

From its vantage point high above Earth's atmosphere, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has completed this year's grand tour of the outer solar system – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune — returning crisp images that complement current and past observations from interplanetary...

Jupiter

Hubble’s September 4th photo of Jupiter displays the ever-changing landscape of its turbulent atmosphere, where several new storms are making their mark, and the pace of color changes near the planet’s equator is continuing to surprise researchers. The planet’s equatorial zone...

Jupiter Compass

Saturn

Hubble’s new look at Saturn on September 12 shows rapid and extreme color changes of the bands in the planet’s northern hemisphere, where it is now early autumn. The bands have varied throughout Hubble observations in both 2019 and 2020. Notably, Saturn’s iconic hexagonal storm,...

Saturn Compass

Uranus

Hubble’s October 25th view of Uranus puts the planet’s bright northern polar hood in the spotlight. It’s springtime in the northern hemisphere and the increase in ultraviolet radiation absorbed from the Sun seems to be causing the polar region to brighten. Researchers are...

Uranus Compass

Neptune

In observations taken on September 7th, researchers found that Neptune’s dark spot, which recently was found to have reversed course from moving toward the equator, is still visible in this image, along with a darkened northern hemisphere. There is also a notable dark, elongated...

Neptune Compass

Outer Planets Rotating

From its vantage point high above Earth's atmosphere, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has completed this year's grand tour of the outer solar system – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Hubble's snapshots of the outer planets reveal both extreme and subtle changes rapidly...