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Uranus (The Planet)

rynner2

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Aug 7, 2001
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Here's a moon (of Uranus) that's been officially 'vanished':
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0112/31uranusmoon/

This moon of Uranus was 'discovered' years after the event in old Voyager images, but now the IAU have declared it is no longer kosher. If efforts to refind it should fail, however, then what was it...?!

(You can't keep a good Fortean down!)
 
No kidding, that's odd as hell. It's also strange that it took somebody 13 years to even find the moon in the original image..........
 
Here are the latest pictures of Uranus, taken with a really big telescope somewhere.
If you look carefully you can also see the ring of Uranus. Uranus mainly consists of large amounts of methane with very high winds, and has been probed many times by experts.

Edit to Add (FYI):

_1874663_uranus300.jpg

SOURCE: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1874663.stm
 
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Little known scientific fact

Scientifically it is impossible to see a full moon from Uranus.
 
Speaking of Uranus (oo-er), according to the BBC they've just discovered it has another moon, called S 2001 U1.
New moon for Uranus

Astronomers have discovered a small moon circling the distant planet Uranus.
They say it is among the faintest objects ever detected in our Solar System.

It was first seen in August 2001, but quickly lost amid the glare from Uranus. It was only rediscovered and confirmed a few weeks ago, in August and September 2002.

"The extraordinary small moons we detected around Saturn convinced us that there should be similarly sized small moons around Uranus," Dr J Kavelaars of the National Research Council of Canada told BBC News Online. "Now we have found them."

Until 1997, Uranus was the only gas-giant planet in our Solar System without any known small, irregular moons. Now, including the latest one, six are known to orbit the planet. ...
FULL STORY: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2299343.stm
 
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Uranus has a dusty blue ring
Boffins take a close look with high-power telescope
By Chris Williams
Published Monday 10th April 2006 09:44 GMT
Scientists have found that a new ring of debris found orbiting Uranus is blue. The ring has a small moon in it called Mab, thought to be the source of the particles, and is “strikingly similar” to Saturn's outer ring.

The American team, reporting in Science, say only the smallest particles lost by Mab during meteor impacts are not reclaimed by its gravity. The unusual blue colour is caused by their tiny size reflecting only the blue end of the visible spectrum in a effect similar to that which makes the sky blue.

Team leader Professor Imke de Pater from the University of California said: “The blue colour says that this ring is predominantly submicron-sized material, much smaller than the material in most other rings, which appear red."

The ring was discovered in December using the Hubble Space Telescope. Previous studies of Uranus' rings missed it because they used infra-red radiation. ®

Source

Wow what a gift to entendre enthusiasts, 'Uranus has a dusty ring', priceless :D .
 
Dec 10, 1987 Uranus Probe vanishes in a proton storm only five days from reaching orbit. Next time maybe? :)
 
Uranus rings 'were seen in 1700s'

By Paul Rincon

Science reporter, BBC News, Preston

The rings around the planet Uranus may have been spotted nearly 190 years prior to the accepted date for their discovery, according to a theory.

According to the orthodox view, the rings around Uranus were detected during an experiment in 1977.

Now, a scientist has re-evaluated a claim made in 1797 by astronomer Sir William Herschel that he saw rings around the seventh planet.

The claim had previously been dismissed as a mistake.

The new idea was presented at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting in Preston, UK.

Dr Stuart Eves, who works for Surrey Satellite Technology Limited, first came up the idea when he was given a framed page from an encyclopaedia published in 1815 for his birthday.

The page shows an orrery - a mechanical device detailing the relative positions and motions of planets and moons.

Made by the craftsman William Pearson, it showed the planet Uranus, with its spin axis in the correct plane, with six smaller objects spinning around it.

It was unlikely that these objects were moons. Although two Uranus satellites were found the 18th Century, the sixth moon of Uranus was not found until 1985, after Nasa's Voyager probe flew past the planet.

After researching the subject, Dr Eves found that the Pearson orrery in the encyclopaedia page was based on observations made by Sir William Herschel, who discovered the seventh planet in 1781.

When Dr Eves tracked down Herschel's notes detailing his observations of Uranus, he found the following passage: "February 22, 1789: A ring was suspected".

Herschel even drew a small diagram of the ring and noted that it was "a little inclined to the red". The Keck Telescope in Hawaii has since confirmed this to be the case. Herschel's notes were published in a Royal Society journal in 1797.

Dr Eves told BBC News: "I was thinking, 'could he have got all of that right'? He has one ring, rather than multiple rings as there are at Saturn; it is relatively close to the planet and it's about the right size.

"The opening angle is about right. Astronomical software indicates that it may have been slightly more open as viewed from Earth on the dates Herschel was observing," he added.

"But there are reasons for thinking that the ring plane moves about a bit, and he has the major axis of the ring plane in the right direction. I started to add up all the statistics and I said: I reckon he had a point.

"[Herschel] is not just superimposing a saturnian-style ring system on Uranus. I think it is compelling from a psychological point of view, because he really didn't have much to compare it with at the time."

Other astronomers have dismissed the possibility that Herschel discovered rings around Uranus. They claim that it would have been far too faint for him to have seen from the ground, using contemporary telescopes.

The ring was officially discovered in 1977 during an occultation experiment. One question some will be asking is why no one saw the ring in the intervening years.

Stuart Eves thinks there may be a few reasons for this. Firstly, there are only a few windows of opportunity during which the rings present themselves to Earth.

The Cassini-Huygens mission has also observed darkening of the rings of Saturn. This may be due to dust accumulating on the icy material in the rings.

If this process is happening on Saturn, Dr Eves argues, it could be happening on Uranus. The seventh planet's rings may have been brighter in 1787, allowing Herschel to spot them from Earth. Several other effects could also cause variability in the rings, including loss of material from them.

Another factor may lie with the Earth's atmosphere. As the industrial revolution proceeded apace, light pollution and smog may have prevented subsequent observers from seeing the planet's rings.

More speculatively, a cold snap called the Maunder Minimum, which lasted from 1645 to 1715 and saw temperatures that were on average five degrees lower than today, might have removed water vapour from the atmosphere, locking it up as ice.

If the climate was still relatively cold by the time Herschel made his observations, less water vapour may have made skies clearer and therefore more suitable for astronomy.

Story from BBC NEWS:
Published: 2007/04/18 19:00:15 GMT
© BBC MMVII

SOURCE: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6569849.stm
 
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Planet Uranus rings the changes

Astronomers have captured remarkable new images of the rings of Uranus.
The rings are currently edge-on to Earth, in an event that only happens every 42 years.

A team, led by Imke de Pater from University of California, Berkeley, US, has analysed the rings' structure, with some surprising results.

The group tells the journal Science their images show that the rings are changing much more quickly than researchers had previously believed.

The study compares pictures of the rings obtained in May with data gathered over the last seven years.

The edge-on perspective is considered favourable for seeing particular features in the rings.

It makes the outer rings that contain centimetre- to metre-sized rocks seem dimmer as they obscure each other; but those that are normally almost transparent layers of dust become more visible as the material merges into a thin band along the line of sight.

Astronomers can also look for other properties not measurable from other angles, like warps or waves in the ring structure, the thickness of different rings and their inclination and orientation.

Clearer view

The research team has been using an infrared camera on Hawaii's Keck II telescope to make its observations.

The group also employed the telescope's adaptive optics system which corrects the distortions introduced into images by the Earth's turbulent atmosphere.

The pictures show the nearly edge-on rings appearing as a bright line bisecting a dim Uranus, which appears dark in the infrared.

"The improvements to the adaptive optics systems allowed us to capture unbelievably crisp images of Uranus," said Marcos van Dam from the W. M. Keck Observatory.

The images revealed that the inner rings of micron-sized dust have changed significantly since the Voyager 2 spacecraft photographed the Uranus system 21 years ago. Today the inner rings are much more prominent than expected.

"People tend to think of the rings as unchanging, but our observations show that not to be the case," said Dr de Pater. "There are a lot of forces acting on small dust grains, so it is not that crazy to find that the arrangement of rings has changed."

From orbit

The Hubble Space Telescope also imaged Uranus earlier this month.

Scientists hope this data could expose some of Uranus' small moons. There is even a chance that some previously unknown moons will be discovered.

"This is the unique viewing geometry that only comes along once in 42 years, when we have a chance of imaging these tiny satellites, because normally they are lost in the glare of the rings. Now, the rings are essentially invisible."

The research team will be continuing to gather data over the next few months.

The group is waiting for the Uranus equinox, which occurs in December. At this time, the planet's rings are edge-on to the Sun, and the position of the Earth will allow astronomers to see the rings at a steep angle with no glare from our star
.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6961087.stm
 
I think the phrase here is 'Fnarr fnarr'...

Mystery of bright spot on Uranus
Posted by Paul Sutherland on October 27th, 2011

Amateur astronomers with large telescopes and CCD cameras are being urged to turn them on the distant planet Uranus following reports of the appearance of a brilliant new feature.
The bright spot on Uranus observed with Gemini

Professional images taken using the 8.1-metre Gemini Telescope North on Hawaii have recorded a region said to be ten times brighter than the planetary background.

Leading planetary scientist Dr Heidi B Hammel, a key figure with the James Webb Space Telescope whose special interest is in the ice planets Uranus and Neptune, used her Facebook page yesterday to appeal for more observations. She said that if the feature was confirmed independently by enough amateur astronomers, it would be seen as a “target of opportunity” that would allow NASA’s Hubble space telescope to be switched from its scheduled observing programme to watch it.

Our image here was taken using Gemini by planetary scientisy Larry Sromovsky, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, using Gemini. A line scan through the spot gives the brightness curve below the disk. Superimposed lines of latitude and longitude show how Uranus is tilted right over, believed due to an impact many aeons ago, so that it now rolls around the solar system on its side. Its north pole is at about 4 o’clock in the image.

The bright spot is thought to be some sort of eruption of methane ice high in atmosphere of Uranus. But Dr Sromovsky warned that it is unlikely to be so prominent for amateurs unless they are observing with specialised CCD equipment at longer wavelengths.

He told Skymania News today: “This is an H-band image, centered at 1.6 microns, close to the wavelength of maximum contrast for such features. Its contrast will decrease with decreasing wavelength, and will likely not be detectable by amateur astronomers, except possibly at the longer CCD wavelengths where the Rayleigh scattering background can be suppressed. Looking with a methane band filters at 890 nm might be productive, especially if the feature continues to brighten.

“The feature is not very large; instead its prominence is due to its high altitude, placing it above the intense absorption of methane in the deeper atmosphere. This is much higher than the 1.2-bar methane condensation level and thus it is expected to be predominantly composed of methane ice particles.”

Dr Sromovsky added: “The latitude of the feature is approximately 22.5° north planetocentric, which is a latitude nearly at rest with respect to the interior. So it should rotate around Uranus’ axis with nearly a 17.24-hour period. At the time of the image, the feature’s longitude was 351° West. That could change slowly in either direction.

“The low latitude is unusual. Previous exceptionally bright cloud features on Uranus were at close to 30° North, both in 1998 (Sromovsky et al. 2000, Icarus 146, 307-311) and in 2005 (Sromovsky et al. 2007, Icarus 192, 558-575). The 2005 feature oscillated ±1° about its mean latitude. The new feature might also oscillate in latitude, in which case its longitudinal drift rate might also vary with time.”

Uranus is a puzzle to astronomers because it is a cold planet that emits very little energy of its own, unlike Jupiter and Saturn which pump out heat as they contract. There also appears to be no large-scale convection in its atmosphere and the Voyager probes detected little weeather as they flew by in the early 1980s.

Dr Chris Arridge, of University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory told us that the mega impact in its distant past may also have caused a massive loss of primordial heat left over from the formation of the solar system.

He said: “The consequence of that is that because there is so little heat coming up from inside Uranus, its atmosphere is completely driven by force of sunlight essentially. And so because it has got this large tilt in its axis one pole gets continually illuminated by sunlight for 42 years during half of its orbit while the other is in darkness and then the situation is reversed for 42 years. The atmosphere is very strongly forced and that is a situation we don’t get anywhere else in the Solar System.”

Dr Arridge, who is pushing for a joint NASA-ESA mission to Uranus, said that more cloud-like features and convection patterns were seen around the planet’s equinox in 2007-8, suggesting this was a seasonal effect.

Last month we published a stunning infrared image of Uranus taken by Mike Brown using the Keck telescope.

Symania Source
 
Re: Little known scientific fact

intaglioreally said:
Scientifically it is impossible to see a full moon from Uranus.

Bet it could be proved wrong with a big enough mirror.
 
Actually, I'm sure you can see a full moon from Uranus, depending on where you are. what you count as "on Uranus", and which moon you're looking at.

Our moon, no chance. One of Uranus's moons, much more likely. But you probably want to be fairly high up in the atmosphere, as you couldn't see anything from anything solid enough to stand on.
 
Here's a moon (of Uranus) that's been officially 'vanished':
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0112/31uranusmoon/
This moon of Uranus was 'discovered' years after the event in old Voyager images, but now the IAU have declared it is no longer kosher. If efforts to refind it should fail, however, then what was it...?!

Update for closure ...

This moon (S/1986 U 10) was subsequently imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope, reinstated as a confirmed moon, and given the name Perdita.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perdita_(moon)
 
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Uranus' unusual pole orientation and relative direction of rotation have long been considered puzzling. The primary guess to date had been a massive impact knocking the planet off balance. This new theory suggests the majority (if not all) the strange characteristics may result from a much larger ring system than is currently around Uranus.
There's a New Hypothesis For How Uranus Ended Up Tipped on Its Side

Uranus is quite the individual. Most of the planets in our Solar System have their poles more or less oriented in the same direction. And most of them are spinning anticlockwise, when viewed from above. But Uranus? Its rotation axis is oriented 98 degrees relative to its orbit, and it's whirling around in a clockwise direction.

The leading hypothesis for this weirdness is that something large smacked into Uranus a long time ago, knocking it arse over teakettle. Although that scenario is not impossible, there are some pretty significant holes in this model.

Never fear, though. Astronomers at the University of Maryland have come up with a new scenario that neatly solves those issues. No, Uranus didn't get drunk on comet booze and fall over. But it could have been tilted sideways by a giant ring system.

"Wait a second," you are no doubt thinking, "Uranus doesn't have a giant ring system." And that's correct. Right now, it doesn't - its rings are faint and wispy things compared to Saturn's glorious spread.

But recent evidence from Cassini suggests rings could be temporary and short-lived - so it's possible Uranus had a much more extensive system sometime over its 4.5 billion-year past.
FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/there-s-another-way-uranus-could-have-ended-up-tipped-on-its-side
 
Gas leaked out of Uranus.

NASA scientists digging back through decades-old data from the Voyager 2 spacecraft have made an eyebrow-raising discovery: Something appeared to have been sucking Uranus’ atmosphere out into space.

When Voyager 2 flew past Uranus in 1986, it seems to have passed through something called a plasmoid — a gigantic blob of plasma, essentially — that escaped Uranus and likely pulled a giant gassy cloud of the planet’s fart-like atmosphere along with it, Space.com reports.


https://futurism.com/the-byte/something-leaking-out-uranus
 
Gas leaked out of Uranus.

NASA scientists digging back through decades-old data from the Voyager 2 spacecraft have made an eyebrow-raising discovery: Something appeared to have been sucking Uranus’ atmosphere out into space.

When Voyager 2 flew past Uranus in 1986, it seems to have passed through something called a plasmoid — a gigantic blob of plasma, essentially — that escaped Uranus and likely pulled a giant gassy cloud of the planet’s fart-like atmosphere along with it, Space.com reports.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/something-leaking-out-uranus
Lemme guess. Mostly methane?
 
Previous surveys of Uranus failed to identify any X-ray emissions. Now Uranus has started emitting X-rays. ??? ...
For The First Time, Scientists Have Detected X-Rays Coming Out of Uranus

Every planet in the Solar System has its idiosyncrasies, but Uranus is, truly, one of a kind.

Not only is it tipped sideways so its rotational axis is practically parallel to its orbital plane, it smells terrible, it's leaking everywhere, its magnetic field is an utter mess, and it has rings unlike any other planetary rings in the Solar System.

But wait, there's more. Around 20 years ago, astronomers turned their instruments to capture X-ray emissions coming from Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Unlike every planet before it, Uranus had nary a flash to be seen.

Now, for the first time, we've detected X-rays emanating from the Solar System's oddest ball, and it's not quite clear where they're coming from or what they mean. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/for-the-first-time-scientists-have-detected-x-rays-coming-out-of-uranus
 
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