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Hubble’s Solar System

The Hubble Space Telescope's view of the planets and other objects orbiting our Sun.

This image of the giant planet Jupiter reveals the impact sites of fragments "D" and "G" from Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9....
An image of the planet Jupiter, with its bands of clouds in white, beige, yellow, and red-orange. Only part of the planet is visible. On its lower-left is a brownish scar, appearing as multiple crescent shapes inside of each other.
This Hubble Space Telescope image captures an ultraviolet view of the impacts of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter in July...
In this ultraviolet image, Jupiter appears as a purple sphere. The top and bottom of it (the planet's poles) appear to have a "thicker" layer of clouds that looks darker purple, while the bands of clouds closer to the center appear as a lighter purple. In the top-center is a dark circle in Jupiter's clouds: a shadow cast by one of its moons.
In July 1994, 21 chunks of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which had broken apart a year earlier, slammed into Jupiter. The...
Four images of Jupiter, from bottom to top: 1) Jupiter with a puff of bright light near its limb. 2) The deep maroon scar of the impact is visible against the stripes of Jupiter's clouds. 3) The impact scar is larger with two distinct regions. 4) The impact scar is becoming more diffuse.
This image of Saturn's ultraviolet auroras was taken in 1997 when Saturn was a distance of 810 million miles (1.3...
Saturn is at an angle in this picture, from upper right to lower left. Its bands of clouds are difficult to see, and it mostly appears an orangey-beige color. Its rings are imaged from a little bit below, in different shades of white and gray. Red-orange rings encircle its polls at the upper left and lower right. All on a black background.
This infrared image of Saturn provides detailed information on the clouds and hazes in Saturn's atmosphere. The blue colors indicate...
Saturn, seen in purples, yellows, greens, and blues, is surrounded by its bright rings, in layers of whites and yellows.
Hubble imaged Earth's closest neighbor in space, the Moon. Hubble was aimed at one of the Moon's most dramatic and...
Large crater not entirely in view in this image, with a distinct, steep-looking outer rim. Mountains rise from the center of the crater floor, which appears at the bottom of the image.
While hunting for volcanic plumes on the volatile moon Io, the Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of Io sweeping...
Io is visible in front of Jupiter and casting a shadow on its clouds. Io appears to the left of its shadow in front of Jupiter. Jupiter's clouds appear grayish-blue in the image because of the type of light used to observe it.
An enormous cyclonic storm system rages in the northern polar regions of the planet Mars in this 1999 Hubble Space...
A black-and-white image of Mars. A patch of white ice caps and swirl of whitish clouds can be seen near Mars's north pole.
This 1999 image, one of several taken when Mars was 54 million miles (87 million km) from Earth, is centered...
The rusty-red planet Mars, which has large darker brownish patches covering it throughout. White ice caps are visible at its north pole, with pale swirls of wispy white clouds around all edges.
When 17th-century astronomers first turned their telescopes to Jupiter, they noted a conspicuous reddish spot on the giant planet. This...
The planet Jupiter, a sphere with horizontal stripes of brown, tan, orange, beige, red, and white appears against a solid black background. The planet is not entirely in-frame. Its stripes have varying widths, from very thin to very wide. Within these stripes are mottled, wavy regions, along with several ovals of various sizes. Most of the ovals are whitish, but the largest oval, the Great Red Spot, is orange. The image is taken "sideways" such that Jupiter's stripes run from the upper right to the lower left of the planet in the picture.
Hubble captured this close-up view of an electric-blue aurora eerily glowing one-half billion miles away on the giant planet Jupiter....
Blue glowing lines encircle one of the poles of Jupiter.
Looming like a giant flying saucer in our outer solar system, Saturn puts on a show as the planet and...
Five images of Saturn from lower left to upper right with each image showing Saturn and its rings tilted at different amounts.
Two dramatically different faces of the Red Planet appear in these comparison images showing how a global dust storm engulfed...
Two images Hubble images of Mars. The left image shows Mars with its polar caps and a few white clouds. The right image shows the planet enshrouded in a dust storm.
These images reveal an increase in Neptune's brightness in the southern hemisphere, indicating a seasonal change. Observations of Neptune made...
Three images of the planet Neptune. Many layers of cloud bands of varying shades of blue, sometimes with streaks of white clouds as well. All three images have a green "ring" encircling the planet's south pole.
This portrait of Mars was taken on August 27, 2003, within minutes of the planet's closest approach to Earth in...
An image of the rusty-red planet Mars, which shows its icy-white south polar cap.
This ultraviolet image of Saturn was taken when the planet's rings were at a maximum tilt of 27 degrees toward...
Saturn, seen in purples, greens and blues, is surrounded by its bright yellow rings.
By using certain types of color filters, as in this Hubble Space Telescope image of Uranus, astronomers can extract more...
Image of blue Uranus, with three purple marks in it. Surrounding Uranus is a ring.
Jupiter appears in pastel colors in this photo because this observation was taken in near-infrared light. The photo shows sunlight...
The bands of clouds on Jupiter appear in pastel colors of pink, light yellow, light green, and light blue. Three dark shadows are seen on Jupiter on the upper-right edge, upper-left edge, and center-left. Two of the moons themselves can be seen as well: Ganymede in light blue on the center-right, and Io in white just above the center.
Seen from space, an aurora appears as a ring of light circling a planet's polar region, where magnetic poles typically...
Saturn against the black background of space. The planet is made up of a very large sphere at the center, which has a range of beige, muted pink, and light green bands around it. It is surrounded by a system of rings, which extends from the top left to the bottom right of this image. A glowing blue ring encircles the planet's south pole, appearing on the lower-left of the planet.
Hubble snapped this picture of Mars on October 28, 2005, within a day of its closest approach to Earth on...
Rusty-red Mars is mottled with grey-brown regions in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres of the planet. Clouds are visible at the planet's North Pole, partially obscuring its north polar ice cap. The South Pole's ice cap is visible at the bottom of the image.
Hubble provided astronomers with extraordinary views of Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, a fragile comet that was rapidly disintegrating as it approached...
A grayscale image with a back background. In the upper-left is a trail of several small glowing dots, with a tail that extends down to the lower-right.
Discovered by Hubble in 2005, Pluto's moons Nix and Hydra are roughly 5,000 times fainter than Pluto and are about...
A bright blue-white glowing sphere that resembles a star, and a second, slightly-smaller one right next to it on the lower-right. To the right of these two objects are two small glowing dots in the background.
This image of Uranus taken in 2003 shows the distant planet and some of its faint rings. Hubble observations have...
The blue-green planet Uranus, which lies on its sides with its rings appearing above and below it. In this image, the outermost ring appears as a thick white line, while the inner rings appear as dark, thinner arc shapes.
A planetary game of Pac-Man takes place among three storms, or "red spots" clustered together in Jupiter's atmosphere in this...
A small snapshot of one portion of Jupiter, with bands of clouds in red, orange, white, and beige. In the lower half of the image are three circular storms: a large red-orange one just right of center, a small orange one on the far left, and a white-orange one lower and left of center.
Jupiter's moon Ganymede is playing a game of "peek-a-boo." In this crisp Hubble image, Ganymede is shown just before it...
The bottom half of Jupiter appears in this image, with the rest of the planet cut off at the top and on the left of the image. Jupiter's clouds form bands of red, orange, white, and beige. The red-orange Great Red Spot lies near the center of the portion of Jupiter that's visible here, just above-left of the center of the image. On the lower-right, most of Ganymede can be seen as a brown orb, with a small corner of it blocked by Jupiter on its upper-left.
Saturn's comparatively paper-thin rings are tilted edge on to Earth every 15 years. Because the orbits of Saturn's major moons...
Six different images of Saturn, stacked top-to-bottom. In each one, multiple moons are visible, sometimes with their shadows cast onto Saturn's clouds. The clouds appear in bands of yellow, beige, and off-white. Its rings appear white and relatively thin in all six image.
Saturn's comparatively paper-thin rings are tilted edge on to Earth every 15 years. Because the orbits of Saturn's major satellites...
Saturn's clouds appear in bands of yellow, beige, and off-white. Its rings appear white and relatively thin. Four moons are visible: Titan on the upper-right of Saturn's disk as an orange circle, and three small white dots, two on the left and one at the very edge of Saturn on the right. The two moons on the left are casting shadows onto Saturn's clouds, slightly above and to the right of them.
This picture shows a dark smudge at bottom right where debris from a comet or asteroid plunged into Jupiter's atmosphere...
The planet Jupiter, with its cloud bands of orange, red, white, beige, and light brown. Near the bottom of the planet, slightly right of center, is a relatively-small black scar. All on a black background.
In January and March 2009, astronomers took advantage of a rare opportunity to record Saturn when its rings were edge-on,...
Saturn appears as a pale blue orb, with its rings making a dark band across the center of the planet. The rings of Saturn's aurorae at the poles are faintly visible, also in blue.
These four images of Neptune were taken during the planet's 16-hour rotation. The snapshots were taken at roughly four-hour intervals,...
Four images of Neptune, arranged in a two-by-two square against a black background. Each one appears a pale blue, looking slightly greenish by the south pole, and each one has streaks and/or patches of pink-orange cloud bands.
The auroras on Jupiter and Saturn are well-studied, but not much is known about the auroras of the giant ice...
Two images of Uranus side-by-side. The planet appears a pale blue, with its rings extending in a thin white arc above and below it. Each image of Uranus has a pale bluish-white splotch of its aurorae, appearing on the upper-right of the image of Uranus on the left and center-right in the image on the right.
This mottled landscape showing the impact crater Tycho is among the most violent-looking places on our Moon. This image, taken...
This image of the Moon's surface appears in varying shades of gray. A large circular crater appears in the top-center of the image, surrounded by a halo of dark gray dust. Many other smaller craters spot the surface throughout the rest of the image.
In this Hubble Space Telescope composite image taken in April 2013, the Sun-approaching Comet ISON floats against a seemingly infinite...
Black background dotted with stars and galaxies. The bright-white comet is in the upper right quadrant of the image, just to the upper right of center. Its tail is pointing toward the lower left corner.
This composite Hubble Space Telescope image captures the positions of Comet Siding Spring (C/2013 A1) and Mars in a never-before-seen...
A comet with a tail streaking through space with small, orange Mars in the background along with many stars.
The Hubble Space Telescope treats astronomers to gorgeous close-up views of the eerie outer planets. But it's a bit of...
Jupiter with its moon Ganymede's shadow forming the dark pupil of an eye with the great red spot as the iris. Only part of Jupiter is visible in this image, which is in grayscale.
On January 24, 2015, the Hubble Space Telescope captured a rare look at three of Jupiter's largest moons, Europa, Callisto,...
Jupiter appears at an angle in this image, with its colorful bands of clouds running from the upper-right to the lower-left. Its Great Red Spot is not visible. Three moons appear in front of the planet's disk: yellow Io at the very top right; brown Callisto near the bottom left (with its shadow appearing below-left of Io); and white Europa at the very bottom left (with its shadow appearing below-right of Callisto).
Hubble produced this global map of Jupiter — the first in a series of annual portraits of the solar system's...
The entire surface atmosphere of Jupiter, with its colorful band of clouds, appears flattened out into a rectangle, much like how a 2D map of Earth appears.
Astronomers are using the Hubble Space Telescope to study auroras — stunning light shows in a planet's atmosphere — on...
Bright blue aurora circle the top of Jupiter's north pole.
Named after the Roman king of the gods, the immense planet Jupiter is undoubtedly king of the solar system. Containing...
The planet Jupiter. A planet covered in horizontal bands of swirling clouds in red, orange, white, brown, and beige. The Great Red Spot appears on the left side of the planet.
These composite images show a suspected plume of material erupting two years apart from the same location on Jupiter's icy...
Two Side-by-side images of Europa showing a white plume extending from the moon's limb. Left image was takin in 2014, right in 2016.