Uranus in natural colours

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Caption: This is an image of the planet Uranus taken by the spacecraft Voyager 2 in 1986. Its appearance is close to what the naked eye would see. The greenish-blue colour indicates an atmosphere containing methane.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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Glossary Terms: Giant Planet , Ice Giant , Outer Planets , Uranus
Categories: Solar System

License: Public Domain Public Domain icons

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Saturn

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Caption: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 observed Saturn on 20 June 2019 as the planet made its closest approach to Earth this year, at approximately 1.36 billion kilometres away. The image shows coloured bands of gas on the planet's surface as well as its prominent rings made of ice and rocky material.
Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), and M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley)
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Glossary Terms: Gas Giant , Giant Planet , Outer Planets , Ring , Saturn
Categories: Solar System

License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) icons

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Neptune

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Caption: Voyager 2 Narrow Angle Camera image of Neptune taken in August 1989. The Great Dark Spot, flanked by cirrus clouds, is at center. A smaller dark storm, Dark Spot Jr., is rotating into view at bottom left. Additionally, a patch of white cirrus clouds to its north, named "Scooter" for its rapid motion relative to other features, is visible.
Credit: NASA / JPL / Voyager-ISS / Justin Cowart
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Glossary Terms: Giant Planet , Ice Giant , Neptune , Outer Planets
Categories: Solar System

License: Public Domain Public Domain icons

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Uranus with rings

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Caption: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s ACS/HRC camera observed Uranus in August 2005. The surface depicts white clouds and a bright polar region. The rings around Uranus are narrow and contain rocky material from tiny dust particles up to metre-sized boulders.
Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter (SETI Institute)
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Glossary Terms: Giant Planet , Ice Giant , Outer Planets , Ring , Uranus
Categories: Solar System

License: Public Domain Public Domain icons

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Planet formation around the star TW Hydrae

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Caption: This image shows the disk around the young star TW Hydrae. This star is only about 10 million years old, young enough that planets are still forming in a disk of gas and dust around it. This image was created using an array of submillimetre telescopes, each of which looks like a satellite dish. The signals from these telescopes were combined by a central processing computer to make this image. The lighter and darker patches show areas of the disk where there is more or less dust respectively. The dark rings and bright rings are evidence that the dust in the disk has been shepherded into some orbits and away from others. This is likely because there is one or more planets that are still forming hidden in the disk. The whole image shows the disk around TW Hydrae out to a distance of about 70 astronomical units frm the central star. The two outer dark rings are separated from the central star by approximately the average distance between the Sun and Uranus and the average distance between the Sun and Pluto. The inner central hole appears to have been carved out by a planet orbiting TW Hydrae at a distance similar to the distance between the Earth and the Sun.
Credit: S. Andrews (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA); B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF); ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)
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Glossary Terms: Planet Formation
Categories: Exoplanets & Astrobiology

License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) icons

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