The Most Detailed Images of Uranus' Atmosphere Ever 105
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!"
Must... Resist... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Must... Resist... (Score:4, Funny)
The methane in the atmosphere is causing swassal warming!
Re:Must... Resist... (Score:5, Funny)
"Hey doc... I can smell Uranus!"
"Oh, I'm sorry Fry, scientists renamed Uranus years ago to rid the earth of that stupid joke once and for all. Now it's called Urectum!"
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Urectum? Dammed near killed him.
Rectifying Nomenclature (Score:2)
Moral of the co
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*braces self for goatse picture*
Showing my age... (Score:4, Funny)
#insert "YourAnusJoke.h" (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:#insert "YourAnusJoke.h" (Score:5, Funny)
It's quite clear you're used to inserting in YourAnus.h, but I believe you really meant to #include it.
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And for some reason, I has a strange compulsion to reply to this.
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Look at the second part of his username, people.
Ha ha ha... (Score:4, Funny)
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.
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From what I hear, unless you add a "liked" page to an interest list, it won't show up in the main feed. Unless they pay to promote a post. I just happened to catch this one in that little side stalker feed that shows people's comments and likes as they happen. It's a result of FB's efforts to "clean up" the main news feed by only showing you the stuff you don't care about, but FB thinks you should see.
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fair warning. (Score:5, Funny)
If you click any links in the comments for this article, you deserve it.
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I took one for the team and looked. We're safe.
Re:So how really do they account for the swirling (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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).
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"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.
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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
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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
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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 s
Not really two rotation axes, just two components (Score:2, Informative)
(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 bre
Re:So how really do they account for the swirling (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Holy shit.. (Score:5, Funny)
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Unless you can create some sort of tractor beam-like device (through gravitational or magnetic effects... maybe even sound through the atmosphere, theoretically) that probably isn't possible. In theory I suppose you could split pieces off through bullet-type projectiles, but given the thickness of the atmosphere that would probably also not be possible. You certainly couldn't use the same technology we use today, gravity and environment is far too strong for that.
All this is, of course, well beyond our cur
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Are you inviting scientists to probe Uranus?
AW CRAP I couldn't hold back...
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We really need to send rovers to more planets. The gas giants should be easy, you can use aero-braking and balloons to land and explore. We can send probes to the bottom of the ocean, the pressure on a gas giant should be easy.
Nope. Not even close [wikipedia.org]
The temperature and pressure inside Jupiter increase steadily toward the core. At the phase transition region where hydrogen—heated beyond its critical point—becomes metallic, it is believed the temperature is 10,000 K and the pressure is 200 GPa. The temperature at the core boundary is estimated to be 36,000 K and the interior pressure is roughly 3,000–4,500 GPa.
The Most Detailed Images of Uranus (Score:2)
If they can demote Pluto ... (Score:1)
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I vote for Pazuzu.
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... surely they can change the name of YOOR a nus
Urectum?
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...or Taesticles?
Bootlicker
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Or Slashdot posters could Grow The Fuck Up.
OK, that is rather far-fetched, but I keep hoping.
Voyager (Score:5, Interesting)
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. [wikipedia.org]
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!
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If Obama came out in favor of oxygen, Republicans would suffocate in protest.
Then let him. And if we can only find a way to get rid of Democrats after, then the world will be perfect. Those two parties are responsible for all the bad legislation of the last century....
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Humans are the real cause of problems, not political parties. If you put an ape behind the wheel of the best car there is, it's still an ape driving.
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Name Change (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Oblig. Futurama reference (Score:2)
In order to eliminate jokes about 'Uranus', the planet's name will be changed in 2620.
To 'Urectum'.
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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.
Just change the pronunciation. Instead of saying it like "your anus", change the 'a' to the short 'a' like in 'apple'. The existing pronunciation is making too many people laugh and we all know how bad that is for you.
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So you suggest ...instead of "Your Anus" we pronounce it: "you're an ass".
"You're an us" would be a better approximation. Your way is good too though.
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Sorry, but.. "arr anus"? Is that the best you've got? I never knew pirates shared anii.
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No change needed, the short "a" version is an accepted prononciation of the name, and in fact is closer to the original Latin.
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Great, that's settled then. From now on, it's pronounced URINE-US.
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with satellites and telescopes able to see galaxies across the universe, and we get a shitty picture...
Wow, talk about asking for the joke.
can anyone be serious? (Score:2)
there is no way that a post like this could appear on /. without fart jokes, and not much more. Just can't stop smiling.
Talcum (Score:2)
Sorry to have put an explicit graphical image inside your brain.
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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!?
7 percent (Score:2)
did you know that English is spoken by less than 7% of the world's population?
Did you know that..
And never again... (Score:1)
...was the use of the word "atmosphere" so important as this instance.