Quadruple Saturn moon transit snapped by Hubble

This close-up view of Saturn's disc captures the transit of several moons across the face of the gas giant planet. The giant orange moon Titan — larger than the planet Mercury — can be seen at upper right. The white icy moons that are much closer to Saturn, hence much closer to the ring plane in this view, are, from left to right: Enceladus, Dione, and Mimas. The dark band running across the face of the planet slightly above the rings is the shadow of the rings cast on the planet. This picture was taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on 24 February 2009, when Saturn was at a distance of roughly 1.25 billion kilometres from Earth. Hubble can see details as small as 300 kilometres across on Saturn.

Credit:

NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA). Acknowledgment: M. Wong (STScI/UC Berkeley) and C. Go (Philippines)

About the Image

Id:heic0904f
Type:Observation
Release date:17 March 2009, 14:00
Related releases:heic0904
Size:1006 x 1006 px

About the Object

Name:Dione, Enceladus, Mimas, Saturn, Titan
Type:Solar System : Planet : Type : Gas Giant
Solar System : Planet : Satellite
Category:Solar System

Image Formats

r.titleLarge JPEG
97.6 KB
r.titleScreensize JPEG
79.6 KB

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r.title1024x768
94.2 KB
r.title1280x1024
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r.title2048x1536
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Colours & filters

BandWavelengthTelescope
Optical
B
439 nm Hubble Space Telescope
WFC2
Optical
V
555 nm Hubble Space Telescope
WFPC2
Optical
R
675 nm Hubble Space Telescope
WFPC2

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