Hubble Catches Titan Chasing Its Shadow

This movie still shows Titan chasing its shadow across Saturn's disk. The still is from a movie created from images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. It reveals the planet's rings tipped nearly edge-on toward the Earth.

This edge-on alignment happens once every 15 years. The last time this alignment occurred was in 1995 and 1996. The images for the movie were taken Aug. 6, 1995 with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, in blue, green, and red filters.

This true-color image of Saturn shows the bands of clouds that make up the planet's atmosphere. This banded structure is similar to Jupiter's. A thick haze covers the clouds. The moon Tethys is just beneath Saturn's rings on the left. The "thumbnail" images on the far left are frames from the movie that show the moons transiting the planet.

About the data

The Hubble images and videos were created from HST data from proposal 6030 : M. Tomasko and E. Karkoschka (University of Arizona); and proposal 9354: E. Karkoschka and M. Tomasko (University of Arizona).