Mars and Saturn images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope

Over the past 28 years, the Hubble Space Telescope has captured some of the most iconic images of space. Now, as Mars and Saturn are getting closer to Earth this summer, the legendary telescope has taken a variety of beautiful images to add to the collection.

Although millions of miles from Earth, the orbits of Mars and Saturn brought the two planets closer together near ours this summer. The phenomenon is known as "opposition", because the planets rise to the east when the sun sets to the west, and this event gave astronomers a unique opportunity to capture detailed images of the planets , thanks to their proximity and the total illumination of the sun.

"Since the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope by NASA and the European Space Agency, its goal has always been to study not only distant astronomical objects, but also planets within our solar system. ", space agencies wrote in a statement. "The high-resolution images of our planetary neighbors by Hubble can only be surpassed by the images taken by the spaceships that visit these bodies. However, Hubble has an advantage over space probes: it can observe these objects periodically, and monitor them for much longer periods than any passing probe. "

Hubble has proven to be a workaholic during his nearly three decades of operation, while his successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, is plagued by delays and has a cost of $ 9.66 billion $ 9.66 billion NASA recently announced that the new telescope will not be ready until at least March 30, 2021. Meanwhile, we can continue to admire the images obtained by the old Hubble.

The moons of Saturn

Saturn revolved around 870 million miles in opposition to the Earth on June 27. A few weeks earlier, Hubble captured images of the six moons of the planet: Dione, Enceladus, Tethys, Janus, Epimetheus, and Mimas, which appeared as tiny dots in the sky.At the North Pole of the ringed planet, Hubble again identified a hexagonal pattern, which was seen for the first time 37 years ago during an overflight of Voyager 1.

Mars Storms

Just under two weeks before Mars arrived With his closest approach to the Earth in 15 years (about 36 million miles on July 27), Hubble captured a massive and massive dust storm that engulfed the red planet. The lingering storm lasted more than four months, which caused problems for the Mars Opportunity rover, which works with solar energy, and during the storm, NASA was not able to connect with the rover. The picture above shows how dense the phenomenon is on the surface of the planet.