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Hubble Captures Full View of Uranus’s Rings on Edge

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captures a rare view of the entire ring system of the planet Uranus, tilted edge-on to Earth.

The rings 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 rings' 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.

About the Object

Distance
DistanceThe physical distance from Earth to the astronomical object. Distances within our solar system are usually measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Distances between stars are usually measured in light-years. Interstellar distances can also be measured in parsecs.
The semi-major axis of Uranus's orbit about the sun is 19.18 Astronomical Units (A.U.) or roughly 2.9 billion km.
Dimensions
DimensionsThe physical size of the object or the apparent angle it subtends on the sky.
Uranus (without rings) has a diameter of roughly 32,000 miles (51,000 km) at the equator.

About the Data

Data Description
Data DescriptionProposal: A description of the observations, their scientific justification, and the links to the data available in the science archive.
Science Team: The astronomers who planned the observations and analyzed the data. "PI" refers to the Principal Investigator.
The Hubble image was created from HST data from proposals 10473: M. Showalter (SETI Institute) and J. Lissauer (NASA Ames Research Center), and 10870, and 11292: M. Showalter (SETI Institute), R. French (Wellesley College), D. Hamilton (University of Maryland), J. Lissauer (NASA Ames Research Center), and P. Nicholson (Cornell University).
Instrument
InstrumentThe science instrument used to produce the data.
HST>WFPC2
Exposure Dates
Exposure DatesThe date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time.
August 2007
Filters
FiltersThe camera filters that were used in the science observations.
F450W (B), F606W (V), F814W (I)

Object Name
Object NameA name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object.
Uranus
Object Description
Object DescriptionThe type of astronomical object.
Planet
Release Date
August 23, 2007
Science Release
Going, Going, Gone: Hubble Captures Uranus’s Rings on Edge
Read the release
Credits
NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter (SETI Institute)

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Related Images & Videos

Going, Going, Gone: Hubble Captures Uranus's Rings on Edge

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...

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Uranus, 2005

Uranus, 2007