Did you know you can do opposition research in space? You’re not exactly digging up dirt on alien rivals, but taking advantage of the orbital proximity of planets to Earth to get a much closer look at them.
Last week, both Mars and Saturn were in opposition—meaning they were about as close to us as they can get in their orbits. So astronomers turned the Hubble Space Telescope toward these approaching neighbors.
The treasure trove of images from Hubble and other spacecraft missions, is giving us the chance to get to know our solar system up close and personal. For instance, NASA dug into the Cassini archives and released a photo the spacecraft took of Saturn’s famous rings along with five of its moons. They might not sparkle or feature the mind-boggling scale of far-away galaxies and star clusters, but think of Earth and its neighboring planets as a sort of family. This is one more picture to add to the album.
We are nowhere near alone in the universe. Browse out the full collection of Wired’s space photos here.
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