Composite Hubble Space Telescope (HST) image of the Saturn Lyman-alpha bulge (white latitudinal band), an emission of radiation from atmospheric hydrogen. The data from a near-ultraviolet image obtained in 2017 during the Saturn summer is used in the image to show the Lyman-alpha emission of the planet. This increased level of radiation indicates that a portion of the atmosphere is being heated from an outside source. It's believed that particles from Saturn’s icy rings (dark blue) raining into the planet's atmosphere can cause atmospheric heating.

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Size: 3000px × 3000px
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Photo credit: © NASA, ESA, Lotfi Ben-Jaffel/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

Keywords: -, -ultraviolet, 2000s, 2010s, 2017, astronomical, astronomy, astrophysical, astrophysics, atmosphere, atmospheric, background, black, bulge, composite, emission, heating, hst, hubble, hydrogen, image, imaging, lyman-alpha, planetary, planets, radiation, saturn, science, solar, space, spectrograph, stis, system, telescope