This new Hubble Space Telescope image of the planet Uranus shows its rings and several satellites. It was released yesterday.

The region outside the planet was enhanced in brightness to make things more visible.

The outermost ring is brighter on the lower side, where it is wider. It is made of dust and small pebbles, which create a thin, dark, and almost vertical line across the right side of Uranus, astronomers said.

The bright satellite on the lower right corner is Ariel, which has a snowy white surface. Five small satellites with dark surfaces can be seen just outside the rings. Clockwise from the top, they are: Desdemona, Belinda, Portia, Cressida, and Puck.

Erich Karkoschka of the University of Arizona led the observations and expects to produce a paper on the results in about a year.

"The science from these images will focus on the vertical structure of the atmospheres, such as altitudes of cloud layers, thickness of hazes, size and composition of cloud particles, and how they vary with latitude," Karkoschka told SPACE.com. "How high are the small features in the atmosphere, how extended?"

Credit: Hubble/NASA/Erich Karkoschka, University of Arizona