Hubble Camera Snags Rare View of Uranus Rings

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2007-093

Hubble Camera Snags Rare View of Uranus Rings
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
August 23, 2007

A rare image of the ring system of the planet Uranus has been captured
by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, using the onboard JPL-built and
designed Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.

The view, tilted edge-on to Earth, was photographed on August 14,
2007.
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 appeared in 2003 Hubble images, but were not
noticed there until they were seen in 2005 Hubble images, which
prompted
astronomers to analyze the previous ones more carefully. Uranus has a
total of 13 dusty rings.

In the image, 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 Hubble 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.

Uranus is the 7th planet from the sun. Its diameter, without the
rings,
is about 51,000 kilometers (32,000 miles) at the equator. Additional
images and information on the Hubble Space Telescope is online at
http://hubblesite.org/news/ . The Hubble Space Telescope is a project
of
international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency.
JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena.

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Media contact: Jane Platt 818-354-0880
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Jane.platt@xxxxxxxxxxxx

2007-093

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