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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."
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.
I can't wait until 2620 so I don't have to hear Uranus jokes anymore.
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.
Then the Urectum jokes will commence!
what's the same about star trek and toilet paper? they both circle uranus searching for klingons!
I think the Farkers have already made every possible anus joke.
I think that statement was true even before this latest news came out.
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
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.
Actually, they had already found a red ring:
"... 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."
I would love to have been the astronomer that got to stand up in front of a conference room full of scientists and said:
"We have found a red ring around Uranus..." [Room erupts in laughter.]