Hubble's New Views of Neptune

By Nancy Atkinson - July 12, 2011 at 5:43 PM UTC | Planetary Science

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To celebrate the first complete orbit of the planet Neptue since its discovery in 1846, the Hubble Space Telescope took a series of images with the Wide Field Camera 3, showing the different faces of the planet as it rotates on its axis. The images were take on June 25-26, 2011.

Even with a telescope as powerful as Hubble, the planet still appears fairly small, but some details are visible. While its blue color is the most distinctive feature, the turbulent conditions in the planet's atmosphere also show up. Neptune's thick atmosphere is largely made up of hydrogen and helium and is thought to host the Solar System's most furious storms, with winds of up to 2000 km/h.

See more about Neptune and these images from

ESA's Hubble page

(including access to wallpaper-sized images) and tead more about Neptune's discovery and anniversary in

our article by Tammy Plotner.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com