A gasy planetary parade

From left to right: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The planets have been captured separately by the Hubble Space Telescope. In this image, the planets are not to scale.

Notes

Jupiter: The planet is shown in high detail, with its atmosphere appearing crystal clear—unlike how it would look through a ground-based telescope, where Earth's atmosphere causes it to appear wobbly and blurry. At the center of the planet, we can distinguish the "Great Red Spot," an enormous storm raging in Jupiter’s atmosphere. It should be noted that Jupiter is a gas giant, meaning its “surface” is entirely made up of gas.

Saturn: Saturn’s rings are depicted in high detail, with the Cassini Division (a gap between the rings) clearly visible. The layers formed by its gaseous atmosphere are observable on the planet’s surface. At its pole, one can also distinguish a hexagonal structure, which is caused by the rotation of the gas giant.

Uranus: The planet’s tilt is clearly shown in this image, as we can see that its pole is facing the telescope, and it is not aligned close to the y-axis. The planet appears blue due to the composition of its atmosphere, which contains hydrogen, helium, and methane.

Neptune: Similar to Uranus, but slightly larger in size, the cold ice giant displays vivid shades of blue. In the top-left region of the planet, we can see the “Small Dark Spot,” a storm in Neptune’s atmosphere.

Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), and the OPAL team