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The Most Detailed Images of Uranus' Atmosphere Ever
New submitter monkeyhybrid writes "The Planetary Society's Emily Lakdawalla reports on the most detailed images of Uranus ever taken. The infrared sensitivity of the ground based Keck II telescope's NIRC2 instrument enabled astronomers to see below the high level methane based atmosphere that has hampered previous observations, and with unprecedented clarity. If you ever thought Uranus was a dull blue looking sphere then look again; you could easily mistake these images for being of Jupiter!"
Forthcoming... Joke...
Preemptive "stop it, you immature clod."
I can't lie, as soon as I saw the headline "Most detailed image of Uranus..." on my FB feed, I began chuckling to myself. I know, I'm a child.
If you click any links in the comments for this article, you deserve it.
Some of them have been. Yours, on the other hand. . .
I love astronomy, but I literally read this on my phone whilst sitting on the toilet. I know the jokes are going to run rampant, so can we perhaps start an intelligent conversation about the utility and practicality of probing or mining the heavier elements below Uranus's hazy methane cloud? Oh wait...damn.
Silence is a state of mime.
Oh come one. Now you totally ruined what could have been an interesting article.
... surely they can change the name of YOOR a nus ... pick some other deity. It's not like there's a shortage.
I am curious to know as well, since uranus has complex rotation. (It rotates on 2 axies; one roughly parallel to the solar ecliptic, and one perpendicular to it.) The coriolis effects would favor the first axis, but would still be influenced by the second.
Other interesting things would be the impact of solar heating due to its unusual angle of primary rotation. I can imagine very strange liquid gas ocean currents on the surface. (If not liquid, at least supercritical) the actual rocky body core inside probably has some very unique features from the erosion of the highspeed, high pressure atmosphere.
It really is a shame that we would have to make probes of pure unobtanium to exlore anything other than the atmospheres of the gas giants. I would love to see the remnants of the impact crater from the impact that knocked uranus into such an obscure rotation, or to see how such a dense and high velocity atmosphere erodes and reshapes the rocky body beneath.
Too bad Voyager didn't have the right IR filters when it flew by. It only found a hazy globe with slight wispyness. I was disappointed with the Uranus pics from Voyager (although its moons were more photogenic).
I was pleasantly surprised to see Neptune had visible features for Voyager.
I truly expected it to be bland like Uranus, and one day I was walking past the newsstand after an intense college exam and spotted a big photo of a beautiful blue planet on the front page with wispy spots and storms. At first I thought it was a sci-fi movie ad.
And then it suddenly hit me: Voyager! Neptune! Wow! A great de-stresser after an exam. It's a "geek moment" I'll never forget. It was so new and foreign and spooky and fscking beautiful!
Table-ized A.I.
I am curious to know as well, since uranus has complex rotation. (It rotates on 2 axies; one roughly parallel to the solar ecliptic, and one perpendicular to it.) The coriolis effects would favor the first axis, but would still be influenced by the second.
Other interesting things would be the impact of solar heating due to its unusual angle of primary rotation. I can imagine very strange liquid gas ocean currents on the surface. (If not liquid, at least supercritical) the actual rocky body core inside probably has some very unique features from the erosion of the highspeed, high pressure atmosphere.
It really is a shame that we would have to make probes of pure unobtanium to exlore anything other than the atmospheres of the gas giants. I would love to see the remnants of the impact crater from the impact that knocked uranus into such an obscure rotation, or to see how such a dense and high velocity atmosphere erodes and reshapes the rocky body beneath.
Agreed. It would be nice to know why it has such an unusually cool core temperature for a gas giant. I'd also like to know if Jupiter's core is really metallic hydrogen. Just the thought that there could be enough pressure to force hydrogen into that state is pretty damn cool (obviously not literally).
They really have to change that planet's name.
Etymology:
It was originally called "Georgium Sidus" after King George III, but since no one liked that name a bunch of unofficial alternatives were thought up. Uranus eventually won out and even became official in 1850. Uranus being the Latinized version of the Greek god of the sky, Ouranos. Bode argued that just as Saturn was the father of Jupiter, the new planet should be named after the father of Saturn. In 1789, Bode's Royal Academy colleague Martin Klaproth named his newly discovered element "uranium" in support of Bode's choice.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
In order to eliminate jokes about 'Uranus', the planet's name will be changed in 2620.
To 'Urectum'.
Have gnu, will travel.
Those dirty rings. You've tried soaking, scrubbing, and you still end up with (singing) Ring Around Uranus!
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
My understanding has been that axis of rotation being almost in the elliptic plane is more stable, for a planet with those parameters, and it would have slowly moved into that orientation itself. The earth would do this also but its stabilized by the moon. The moon is slowly getting further away though, and the earth is expected to eventually enter a chaotic period where the axis of rotation wanders around chaotically before finally settling in the elliptic plane. By then we'll already be toast from the increased luminosity of the sun though.
I strongly recommend not clicking on parent's link...
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
I am curious to know as well, since uranus has complex rotation. (It rotates on 2 axies; one roughly parallel to the solar ecliptic, and one perpendicular to it.)
I think you're a little confused here because I haven't been able to find any source for what you write. Yes, there are times that one or the other poles points toward the Sun and times that the Sun is over the equator, but that doesn't have anything to do with Uranus rotating on two axes. It's just that it's lying on its side relative to its orbit so different parts of it point toward the Sun at various times.
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Considering that Uranus (Ouranos) in ancient Greek implies "sky"; would it not have been simpler to have just named it Urasterisk? Assuming the Greeks - in mirthful, strategical anticipation - consulted the Pythia prior to selecting the name, and that the root "asteriskos" actually implies "little star", we could've had our planet and our jokes too. The asterisk arguably resembles the southern latitudinal extremity of the head, but also carries etymological connotations of a star. Win/Win.
Moral of the comment: After Alexander and Uranus, don't trust Oracles.
Pardon, folks; I could resist no better.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
According to TFA they didn't account for Coriolis effects. The overall rotation causes 60 pixels of shift per hour, whereas the differences in rotation speed are only good for 3 pixels per hour.
I don't know much about hydrodynamics of gas giants, but I suppose that there is a mechanism that prevents the formation of hurricane-like structures that are big enough and rotating fast enough to show up on photos of this resolution. Typical photos of Jupiter show only small scale eddies. Except for Jupiter's big spot, but even that one doesn't change shape on a timescale of a few hours.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
(It rotates on 2 axies; one roughly parallel to the solar ecliptic, and one perpendicular to it.)
For one, the rotation due to orbiting around the Sun is a little over 40,000 times slower. So the contributions of that to any Coriolis forces would also be about 40,000 times weaker than the rotation of the planet. Second, things like the Coriolis effect only really care about the total rotation of the frame you are talking about. So the angular velocities of the rotation of the planet and orbit would combine to have just a single angular velocity vector that results in a single Coriolis force. The break down into revolutions and orbits would be just two components of a single rotation.
with satellites and telescopes able to see galaxies across the universe, and we get a shitty picture...
Wow, talk about asking for the joke.
I would love to see the remnants of the impact crater from the impact that knocked uranus into such an obscure rotation
Recent models of the solar system's evolution can't account for objects as massive and Uranus and Neptune forming so far from the Sun. The idea is the actually formed much closer and were pushed outward.
The mechanism for this event is proposed to have been a 2:1 orbital resonance between Jupiter and Saturn. Jupiter moved inwards and the other large planets moved outwards, possible causing Uranus' odd axial tilt in the process. This model also proposed that Neptune was originally closer to the Sun than Uranus, but swapped places during the disruptive event. This model makes sense of why Neptune is more massive than Uranus.
An direct impact event would have to have involved something very large to affect such a massive body (14.5 earth masses) so radically. That seems unlikely.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
there is no way that a post like this could appear on /. without fart jokes, and not much more. Just can't stop smiling.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Talcum powder should aid the highlighting of the rings. Let sphincter training commence!
Sorry to have put an explicit graphical image inside your brain.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Astronomers of the world, unite!
Speaking about the "astronomers of the world" - did you know that English is spoken by less than 7% of the world's population?
Do you really fracking think this makes sense as a joke (stupid and childish word play rather) in any language other than English!?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
"I'd also like to know if Jupiter's core is really metallic hydrogen"
Wouldn't helium and/or some of the other, heavier, elements sink to the core?
"The core of Jupiter is a diamond as large as the earth."
-Arthur C. Clarke, from '2010 Odyssey Two"
Not sure if the presence of carbon has ever been verified on Jupiter, but the meteorites that have fallen to earth have often been carbon rich. It seems probable that Jupiter would have attracted lots of space rocks over time.
did you know that English is spoken by less than 7% of the world's population?
Did you know that..
...was the use of the word "atmosphere" so important as this instance.