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Blue Ring Around Uranus
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."
I should get that checked out....
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
If ever there were a topic begging for a goatse post, this is it.
In other news, Uranus has filed suit against Neptune for making it pick up the soap, which Pluto clearly dropped.
we've found the proverbial "blue moon?"
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
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.
How is NASA going to pitch the missions?
The Uranus Probes?
I'd hate to be the mission-director for that one...
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
what's the same about star trek and toilet paper? they both circle uranus searching for klingons!
Every single Slashdotter who thinks they're hilarious will inevitably make their way down the comments, groan that they weren't the first to the joke, and then attempt to make one anyway.. ... the thought clearly never crossed my mind! Ahem.
I've got the spirit, lose the feeling.
In other news the 10th 'planet' has finally been named Mykok, pronounced Mick Oak.
Quite interesting... Uranus' moon is part of the ring - the particles are hitting it - and the moon is slowly disintegrating. Wonder how long it will take for the moon to completely dissolve into the ring.
--- lm747
As long as the ring is not red and itchy, Uranus will be fine.
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
"[+] uranus, science, space, astronomy, anal (tagging beta)"
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
Upon discovery of the blue ring NASA administrators immediatly began a search for an Astroproctologist.
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
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.