HUBBLE CAPTURES A RARE ECLIPSE ON URANUS (STScI-PRC06-42)

FOR RELEASE: 1:00 pm (EDT) August 31, 2006

PHOTO NO.: STScI-PRC06-42

HUBBLE CAPTURES A RARE ECLIPSE ON URANUS

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image is a never-before-seen
astronomical alignment of a moon traversing the face of Uranus,
and its accompanying shadow. The white dot near the center of
Uranus’ blue-green disk is the icy moon Ariel. The 700-mile-diameter
satellite is casting a shadow onto the cloud tops of Uranus. To an
observer on Uranus, this would appear as a solar eclipse, where the
moon briefly blocks out the Sun as its shadow races across Uranus’s
cloud tops. Though such "transits" by moons across the disks of their
parents are commonplace for some other gas giant planets, such as
Jupiter, the satellites of Uranus orbit the planet in such a way that they
rarely cast shadows on the planet's surface. Uranus is tilted so that its
spin axis lies nearly in its orbital plane. The planet is essentially
tipped
over on its side. The moons of Uranus orbit the planet above the equator,
so their paths align edge-on to the Sun only every 42 years. This color
composite image was created from images at three wavelengths in near i
nfrared light obtained with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys on
July 26, 2006.

Credit: NASA, ESA, L. Sromovsky (University of Wisconsin, Madison),
H. Hammel (Space Science Institute), and K. Rages (SETI Institute)

To see and read more about Uranus on the Web, visit:
http://hubblesite.org/news/2006/42

For more information, contact:

Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
(Phone: 410-338-4514; E-mail: )

Terry Devitt
University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis.
(Phone: 608-262-8282; )

Lawrence Sromovsky
University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis.
(Phone: 608-263-6785; )

Heidi Hammel
Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
(Phone: 203-438-3506; )

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation
between NASA and the European Space Agency. The Space Telescope
Science Institute is operated for NASA by the Association of
Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., Washington.

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