Going, Going, Gone: Hubble captures Uranus's Rings on Edge (1)

Caption NASA:"This series of images from NASA's HST shows how the Ring System around the distant planet Uranus appears at ever more oblique (shallower) tilts as viewed from Earth - culminating in the Rings being seen edge-on in 3 observing opportunities in 2007. The best of these events appears in the frame n. 3, taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on August 14, 2007.
The "Edge-On Rings" appear as two spikes above and below the Planet. The Rings cannot be seen running fully across the face of the Planet because the bright glare of the planet has been blocked out in the Hubble photo (a small amount of residual glare appears as a fan-shaped image artifact). A much shorter color exposure of the Planet has been photo-composited to show its size and position relative to the Ring-Plane.
Earthbound astronomers only see Uranus Rings' edge every 42 years as the Planet follows a leisurely 84-year orbit about the Sun. However (and hironically), the last time the Rings were tilted Edge-On to Earth, astronomers didn't even know they existed".