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Bruce Murray Space Image Library

IR Keck images of Uranus ring crossing

IR Keck images of Uranus ring crossing
IR Keck images of Uranus ring crossing The sun-lit side of the rings of Uranus (two left images) captured in the infrared by the Keck II telescope in 2004 and 2006 as Uranus approached the point where its rings appear edge-on from Earth. On May 28, 2007, less than a month after the first ring-plane crossing on May 3, Keck II captured the unlit side of the rings for the first time ever (right). The dotted lines show the position of the epsilon (upper line) and zeta (lower line) rings, with other rings indicated. Imke de Pater (UC Berkeley), Heidi B. Hammel (SSI, Boulder) and the W. M. Keck Observatory