what is that: Saturn, the seventh planet from the sun, seen by NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft
When shooting: August 11, 1981
Where: 886 million miles (1.4 billion kilometers) from the Sun – 9.5 times the distance between Earth and the Sun
Why it’s special: Photographed 42 years ago this month, This pseudo-color image Footage from NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft shows convective clouds and storms in Saturn’s northern hemisphere. The satellites Dione and Enceladus are visible on the right side of the image, the latter of which was recently observed. james webb space telescope The show is Spray a huge spray of water vapor To the other side of the universe.
The image was taken 9 million miles (15 million km) from Earth using the spacecraft’s VG ISS narrow-angle instrument just as Voyager 2 approached the ringed planet. Pseudocolor images were assembled from ultraviolet, violet, and green images using filters that made them visible to the human eye. If you look beneath the yellow cloud band (actually white), you’ll see green dots (actually brown) representing the storm. Voyager 2 measured winds blowing at a staggering 1,100 miles per hour (1,770 km/h) at Saturn’s equator.
Voyager 2 wasn’t the first spacecraft to take images of Saturn. That feature is on Pioneer 11, one of NASA’s first solar system probes. Pioneer 11 was launched in 1973 as the pathfinder for the Voyager mission to study Jupiter, Saturn, and the asteroid belt.
Voyager 2 was also not the first of two Voyager spacecraft to image a ringed planet. Its twin, Voyager 1, reached Saturn in November 1980, and Voyager 2 reached Saturn nine months after her, making its closest approach on August 26, 1981. But Voyager 2 had a more sensitive camera, so it was able to detect more features.According to Saturn’s turbulent atmosphere, NASA.
How to see it in the night sky: Now is the perfect time to see Saturn, but to get a sense of its rings. good telescope. The ringed planet is currently at its brightest this year, reaching opposition (when it is between the Earth and the sun) on August 27th. Saturn is currently in the constellation Aquarius, rising in the eastern sky at dusk.