This sequence of images captures the parade of several of Saturn's moons transiting the face of the gas giant planet. This is a rare event because the rings are tilted edge on to Earth every 15 years. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)With Live Science:
A new Hubble photograph captured a rare alignment of four of Saturn's moons lining up in front of their planet.
The snapshot, taken on Feb. 24 with the NASA/European Space Agency (ESA) Hubble Space Telescope, shows the moons transiting in front of Saturn. The moons, from far left to right, are the white icy moons Enceladus and Dione, the large orange moon Titan, and icy Mimas. Due to the angle of the Sun, they are each preceded by their own shadow.
These rare moon transits only happen when the tilt of Saturn's ring plane is nearly "edge on" as seen from the Earth. Saturn's rings will be perfectly edge on to our line of sight on Aug. 10 and Sept. 4, 2009. Unfortunately, Saturn will be too close to the Sun to be seen by viewers on Earth at that time. This "ring plane crossing" occurs every 14-15 years. In 1995-96 Hubble witnessed the previous ring plane crossing, as well as many moon transits, and helped to discover several new moons of Saturn.
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