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Blue Ring Around Uranus

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the too-many-hours-looking-through-a-telescope dept.

ZedNaught writes "The BBC is reporting that 'astronomers have discovered that the planet Uranus has a blue ring - only the second found in the Solar System. Like the blue ring of Saturn, it probably owes its existence to an accompanying small moon.' According to the April issue of Science, the blue ring is one of two new outer rings recently discovered around Uranus using the infrared Keck adaptive optics system. The rings are blue and red like Saturn's E and G rings. The blue ring around Saturn hosts the moon Enceladus while the Uranus ring contains the moon Mab."

4 of 269 comments (clear)

  1. 21 comments later.... by east+coast · · Score: 5, Informative

    Still not a serious comment on the news story...

    In any case, I found it odd that when MSNBC reported on this a few days ago they called the ring "rare". Considering that we have a whole 8-10 planets to base this on (depending on who's definition you use of "planet") I would consider the 20-25% of "blue ring" planets to be fairly common. It's not like this is an albino Kodiak or some other anomaly.

    Aside from that have a blast mocking the planet for it's unfortunate name. What were they thinking? It's like naming a boy Sue or some such nonsense.

    --
    Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
  2. Re:Difference between moon an asteroid by MichaelSmith · · Score: 5, Informative
    Why was "our" Moon not labeled: "Large Dustry Rock Orbiting Earth"?

    Well thats exactly what it is, however the moons history orbiting earth has left it with a different composition from asteroids. The moon has hardly any water, while many asteroids are now known to have a lot of water.

    So the distinction is still important. The real gray area is with the small outer moons of Jupiter which are called moons but are certainly captured asteroids.

    --
    http://michaelsmith.id.au
  3. Re:Let's face it, we all sniggered by Theatetus · · Score: 4, Informative

    In fairness, the Greek was pronounced something closer to "oorenos" (with a long "o" at the end). The problem comes with putting a "y" before the "ou" vowel; that's an artifact of Latin.

    --
    All's true that is mistrusted
  4. NASA tried to change the name by PizzaFace · · Score: 4, Informative

    Do you remember some years ago when the first probe visited Uranus? The astronomers couldn't talk about "our probe of Uranus" with straight faces, so they changed the planet's pronunciation from "your anus" to "urinous." Not that "our urinous probe" is much better, if you ask me.