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Saturn Southern Hemisphere Skies, New Zealand

Hubble Telescope Image,SATURN

WOW! Who put this beautiful show together?! ...... The Hubble Heritage Team presents - ta da! - the Shining Lady, Saturn. This planet has entranced humans for a long, long time. Galileo first glimpsed the rings around Saturn about 300 years ago. Even a small telescope can see them. They are made mostly of water ice, in the form of rubbly boulders and chunks, which constantly collide gently with each other as they orbit the planet at 35,000 miles per hour. The creation of the rings is a mystery but the Cassini spacecraft may help to answer that question - and others - when it arrives there this year (2004).

Bright shining white and awe-inspiring, Saturn is about 75,000 miles in diameter, which is about 850 times the size of Earth!

Here's a montage of Saturn (86k) showing Saturn over several years of viewing from the Hubble Space Telescope. Interesting!