Advent calendar December 9 : Saturn from Hubble

Probably one of my favorite images of Saturn from the Hubble Telescope. In Fall 2009, Saturn tipped it's rings directly toward Earth so they would nearly completely disappear since they are so thin. Unfortunately, when this happened in September it was pretty much out of view behind the sun, so we missed seeing them totally vanish. Saturn is back out the other side now and up in the early morning skies.