Everything The Hubble Space Telescope Achieved In Its 33rd Year In Orbit – SlashGear

Hubble might be most famous among the public for its beautiful images, particularly of planets in our solar system. Saturn is one of the most beautiful planets thanks to its distinctive rings, and Hubble captured observations of a unique feature in these rings called spokes. These features, which look like dark smudges on the rings, appear at certain times of the season and are thought to be related to the planet’s magnetic field. The spokes will become more noticeable as Saturn’s northern hemisphere approaches its autumn equinox in 2025, giving astronomers the opportunity to study these features in more depth.

Another set of images from our solar system taken by Hubble was used to analyze the changing seasons on Uranus and Jupiter. Like Earth, other planets in our solar system also have seasons due to the tilt of their axis, with one hemisphere pointed more toward the sun and therefore being warmer. However, different planets have seasons that last for different amounts of time than the seasons on Earth because of the length of their orbits.

Hubble looked to Jupiter to see the storms that blow across its northern hemisphere, some of which form into a pattern of cyclones and anticyclones, which form a distinctive wavy band around the planet. Then, on Uranus, Hubble observed the seasonal effects of the planet’s extreme tilt, as it is tipped over almost entirely on its side. Due to this tilt, parts of the planet go for decades without seeing sunlight, which affects the storms which are seen — particularly those around the planet’s poles.