Every time Earth catches up and passes Saturn, putting the two planets at their closest – at opposition – as they circle the Sun, astronomers use the Hubble Space Telescope to check in on the ringed gas giant. This year, on 4 July, Hubble captured a spectacular view of Saturn and its rings as the planet’s northern hemisphere was being warmed by the summertime Sun. Atmospheric banding in the northern hemisphere remains pronounced, as it was in 2019, with several bands changing colour from year to year. The planet’s atmosphere, made up mostly of hydrogen and helium, along with trace amount of ammonia, methane, water vapour and hydrocarbons, has a mostly yellowish-brown hue with a reddish haze at northern latitudes. The haze may be the result of solar heating or changes in the amounts of photochemical haze.
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Hubble finds a festive snow angel
The bipolar star-forming region Sharpless 2-106 some 2,000 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus looks like a soaring, celestial snow angel in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Twin lobes of super-hot gas, glowing blue in this image, stretch outward from the central young and massive star. This hot gas creates the “wings” of our angel.
See the Moon’s ringed-planet rendezvous on 3-4 February
At 6am GMT on the mornings of 3 and 4 February, around the onset of astronomical twilight for the centre of the British Isles, the old waning crescent Moon brushes by ringed planet Saturn low to the south-southeast horizon. As a bonus for telescope users, the Moon occults globular cluster M9 shortly after 6am GMT on 4 February too.