Peering at Uranus's rings as they swing edge-on to Earth for the first time since their discovery in 1977

Eso_eso0737a_1024

eso_eso0737a August 23rd, 2007

Credit: ESO

The rings of Uranus are shown here captured almost exactly edge-on to Earth. This false-colour image was obtained by the NAOS-CONICA infrared camera on ESO's Very Large Telescope at Paranal, Chile. It was taken at 9:00 UT on 16 August 2007, just two hours after Earth had crossed to the lit side of the ring plane. We are peering over the sunlit face of the rings at an opening of only 0.003 degree, an angle so small that the thin rings nearly disappear. At right, the region around the planet has been enhanced to show a thin line, which is sunlight glinting off the ring edges and also reflected by dust clouds embedded within the system. The pictures at left shows the planet and identifies four of its largest moons. One can clearly discern banding in the atmosphere and a bright cloud feature near the planet's south polar collar, on the left side of the image. This is a composite of images taken at infrared wavelengths. The planet is shown in false colour, based on images taken at wavelengths of 1.2 and 1.6 microns. The rings are extracted from an image taken at 2.2 microns, where the planet is darker and therefore the rings are easier to detect. The observations were done by Daphne Stam (TU Delft) and Markus Hartung (ESO, Chile), in close collaboration with Mark Showalter (SETI) and Imke de Pater (UC Berkeley and TU Delft).

Provider: European Southern Observatory

Image Source: https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0737a/

Curator: European Southern Observatory, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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Image Details

Image Type
Observation
Object Name
Uranus
Subject - Solar System
Planet > Satellite
Planet > Ring

Color Mapping

  Telescope Spectral Band Wavelength
Pseudocolor VLT (NACO) Infrared (Near-IR) 2.2 µm
Pseudocolor VLT (NACO) Infrared (Near-IR) 1.6 µm
Pseudocolor VLT (NACO) Infrared (Near-IR) 1.2 µm
Spectrum_base
Pseudocolor
Pseudocolor
Pseudocolor
Eso_eso0737a_1280
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ID
eso0737a
Subject Category
A.1.4   A.1.5  
Subject Name
Uranus
Credits
ESO
Release Date
2007-08-23T00:00:00
Lightyears
Redshift
Reference Url
https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0737a/
Type
Observation
Image Quality
Distance Notes
Facility
Very Large Telescope, Very Large Telescope, Very Large Telescope
Instrument
NACO, NACO, NACO
Color Assignment
Pseudocolor, Pseudocolor, Pseudocolor
Band
Infrared, Infrared, Infrared
Bandpass
Near-IR, Near-IR, Near-IR
Central Wavelength
2200, 1600, 1200
Start Time
Integration Time
Dataset ID
Notes
Coordinate Frame
Equinox
Reference Value
Reference Dimension
683.0, 687.0
Reference Pixel
Scale
Rotation
Coordinate System Projection:
Quality
FITS Header
Notes
Creator (Curator)
European Southern Observatory
URL
http://www.eso.org/
Name
Email
Telephone
Address
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2
City
Garching bei München
State/Province
Postal Code
D-85748
Country
Germany
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Publisher
European Southern Observatory
Publisher ID
eso
Resource ID
eso0737a
Metadata Date
2009-01-20T10:42:57+01:00
Metadata Version
1.1
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Detailed color mapping information coming soon...

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There is no distance meta data in this image.

 

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