The conditions found deep inside the ice giants Uranus and Neptune are intense and exotic, to say the least. The incredibly frigid and windy environments found at the cloud tops, where hydrogen and helium are mixed with methane and ammonia, eventually give way to warmer interiors and crushing pressures with increasing depth. And as scientists…
Category: Uranus
Miranda Just Looks All Wrong
This is a mosaic of Uranus’ moon Miranda made from images acquired by NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft on January 25, 1986. Color added as an approximation to natural color (from what I could determine online.) The incredible ~20km-high Verona Rupes cliff can be seen at lower left along the moon’s limb. The rest of the…
Well, It’s Official: Uranus Smells Like Farts
Scientists have just confirmed what every third-grader has known for nearly 170 years* as irrefutable fact: Uranus smells like stinky farts. Let the giggling commence.
It’s Been 32 Years Since We Last Explored Uranus
Voyager 2 may have been the second of NASA’s famous twin exploration spacecraft but it actually launched first, on August 20, 1977. Eight and a half years later it became the first (and, to date, last) spacecraft to visit Uranus, at 31,500 miles across the third largest planet in the Solar System. Voyager 2 made its closest…
Uranus Lights Up for Hubble
Those white areas aren’t clouds; they’re aurorae—”northern lights”—around the poles of Uranus, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2012 and 2014. (The image of Uranus itself was acquired by the Voyager 2 spacecraft in January 1986.) “The auroras on Jupiter and Saturn are well-studied, but not much is known about the auroras of the…
It’s Been 31 Years Since We Last Visited Uranus
Voyager 2 may have been the second of NASA’s famous twin exploration spacecraft but it launched first, on August 20, 1977. Eight and a half years later it became the first (and last) spacecraft to visit Uranus, at 31,500 miles across the third largest planet in the Solar System. Voyager 2 made its closest pass by Uranus…
More Moons For Uranus?
The distant ice giant Uranus may not have been visited by a spacecraft since Voyager 2’s “Grand Tour” flyby in 1986Â but the data gathered then is still being used today to make new discoveries. Most recently, researchers think they have found evidence of two previously unknown moons around Uranus, potentially bringing the planet’s count up…
Surprising Structures Discovered at the Bottom of Uranus
Out in the depths of our solar system, about 1.8 billion miles away from the Sun somewhere between the planets Saturn and far-flung Neptune, orbits the oddball ice giant Uranus – a frigid, thinly-ringed world tipped almost completely on its side and shrouded in both mystery and pale blue-green clouds. Aside from the occasional bright storm clouds…
Storms on Uranus Observed From Hawaii
Wrapped in an atmosphere tinted pale blue by high-altitude methane, Uranus has occasionally been observed to develop large storms in its frigid windy skies. NASA’s Voyager 2 saw a few small storm clouds spotting Uranus during its flyby in Jan. 1986, and more recently some large but short-lived storms were observed by Hubble and the…
Voyager’s Visit to Uranus
Voyager 2 may have been the second of NASA’s twin exploration spacecraft but it launched first, 35 years ago today on August 20, 1977. 8 1/2 years later it became the first (and last!) spacecraft to visit the gas giant Uranus, the third largest planet in the Solar System.
Rings Around Uranus
This ghostly image was taken by a Chilean ground-based telescope in 2002. It shows the enigmatic gas giant Uranus in near-infrared light, 7 of its 27 known moons visible. (For a labeled version of this image noting the moons, click here.) Seventh planet from the sun, Uranus’ year is 84 Earth-years long. Like the other…
Lights in the Dark 