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Seventh planet has a blue ring
BBC ^ | April 7, 2006 | Helen Briggs

Posted on 04/08/2006 4:03:32 PM PDT by NYer

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.

Scientists suspect subtle forces acting on dust in the rings allow smaller particles to persist while larger ones are recaptured by the moon.

Smaller particles reflect blue light, giving the ring its distinctive colour, the US team reports in Science.

All other rings - those around Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune - are made up of both large and small particles, making the rings reddish in appearance.

Bright blue

Astronomers have long known that the gas giant Uranus is surrounded by rings of dark particulate matter up to ten metres in diameter.

But last December, two new rings - the planet's twelfth and thirteenth - were discovered using the Hubble Space Telescope.

Astronomers observed the ring system at infrared wavelengths with the Keck telescope, in Hawaii.

The outermost ring, and its ice-bound moon Mab, could not be observed in infrared light unlike the red inner ring.

A team led by Imke de Pater, professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, found that the ring was bright blue, something of an oddity in planetary terms.

"The blue colour says that this ring is predominantly submicron-sized material, much smaller than the material in most other rings, which appear red," Professor de Pater said.

The tiny particles - less than a thousandth of the width of a human hair - scatter and reflect predominantly blue light, much like the very small molecules in the air that make the Earth's sky blue.

The more common rings are reddish because they also contain many larger particles, which gives the reflected light its colour, and may be made up of reddish material, perhaps from iron.

It appears that the outer blue rings of Saturn and Uranus are strikingly similar, not least because they are both associated with small moons.

Moon dance

"The moon orbits the planet in the ring," Professor de Pater told the BBC News website.

"It is continuously impacted by very tiny particles [micrometeorites]. On a moon that doesn't have any atmosphere these tiny particles impact the moon at high velocity, and throw stuff up into space.

"Because the moon is so small, it escapes the moon and goes into orbit around the planet.

"The smaller particles stay in orbit around the planet but the larger particles smash back into the moon."

The work was carried out in collaboration with Mark Showalter, of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (Seti) Institute in California; Heidi Hammel, of the Space Science Institute, Colorado; and Seran Gibbard, of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

The scientists plan to carry out further observations next year, when the faint rings of Uranus will be more visible.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; News/Current Events; US: California; US: Colorado; US: Hawaii
KEYWORDS: astronomy; berkeley; california; colorado; hawaii; heidihammel; helenbriggs; hst; imkedepater; jupiter; kecktelescope; llc; mab; markshowalter; moonsofuranus; neptune; planets; ringarounduranus; rings; saturn; science; serangibbard; seti; sirwilliamherschel; telescope; thehubble; uofcalifornia; uranus; williamherschel
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Schematic view of the outermost rings of Uranus...
1 posted on 04/08/2006 4:03:35 PM PDT by NYer
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To: NYer

You would think the rongs would be brown.....


2 posted on 04/08/2006 4:04:23 PM PDT by Blood of Tyrants (G-d is not a Republican. But Satan is definitely a Democrat.)
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To: NYer

This was posted earlier and taken down immediately. I suspect it was because the connection between blue rings and Uranus led to too much ribaldry.


3 posted on 04/08/2006 4:07:15 PM PDT by saganite (The poster formerly known as Arkie 2)
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To: NYer
Seventh planet has a blue ring

Seventh planet? FOCL! They are going to have to rename the poor planet at some point. Might I suggest Caelus?

4 posted on 04/08/2006 4:08:27 PM PDT by Harmless Teddy Bear (Sign up to donate monthly and you will be automatically entered in our "Win a Bear Hug Contest")
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To: NYer

I see they decided to play it safe with the title and call it the 7th planet


5 posted on 04/08/2006 4:08:45 PM PDT by nuconvert ([there's a lot of bad people in the pistachio business])
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To: NYer

6 posted on 04/08/2006 4:09:36 PM PDT by RightWingAtheist (Creationism is to conservatism what Howard Dean is to liberalism)
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To: Blood of Tyrants; shaggy eel

Pinging the Shagster to come on with 'the pic'...

7 posted on 04/08/2006 4:14:08 PM PDT by ErnBatavia (Meep Meep)
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To: PatrickHenry
Please deploy your "Obsession with the Seventh Planet" ping list.....
8 posted on 04/08/2006 4:15:26 PM PDT by longshadow (FReeper #405, entering his ninth year of ignoring nitwits, nutcases, and recycled newbies)
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To: NYer
The scientists plan to carry out further observations next year, when the faint rings of Uranus will be more visible.

The scientists double as proctologists.
9 posted on 04/08/2006 4:20:02 PM PDT by birbear (I took an IQ test and I flunked it of course. I can't spell VW, but I drive a Porsche.)
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To: longshadow; Allegra; wazoo1031; Dog Gone; Maximus of Texas; Lurkin Lurch
Please deploy your "Obsession with the Seventh Planet" ping list.....

This is close enough for our little 'specialty' ping list....

10 posted on 04/08/2006 4:27:51 PM PDT by ErnBatavia (Meep Meep)
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To: longshadow
Please deploy your "Obsession with the Seventh Planet" ping list.....

Already done in a prior thread on this subject, at post 82. Just how many Uranus pings would it take to make you happy?

11 posted on 04/08/2006 4:29:42 PM PDT by PatrickHenry (Yo momma's so fat she's got a Schwarzschild radius.)
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To: Harmless Teddy Bear
Sir William Herschel, who discovered the planet in 1781, wanted to name it in honor of King George III (Georgium sidus), but that suggestion didn't win favor. The Brits for a time called the planet Herschel.
12 posted on 04/08/2006 4:30:44 PM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: Verginius Rufus
It would have been better if they had left it at that.

They name comets after their discoverers, why not planets?

13 posted on 04/08/2006 4:43:18 PM PDT by Harmless Teddy Bear (Sign up to donate monthly and you will be automatically entered in our "Win a Bear Hug Contest")
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To: Blood of Tyrants

Man, this piercing craze is getting out of hand. They're putting rings everywhere now!


14 posted on 04/08/2006 4:46:15 PM PDT by Larry Lucido
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To: Harmless Teddy Bear; Verginius Rufus

According to Wikipedia:

"Finally, Bode, as editor of the Berliner Astronomisches Jahrbuch, opted for Uranus, after Latinized version of the Greek god of the sky, Ouranos"

Not sure "Ouranos" would have been much of an improvement.


15 posted on 04/08/2006 4:48:54 PM PDT by Larry Lucido
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To: Larry Lucido
It was Caelus in Roman mythology. All the other planets are named for Roman gods. Why did Bode have to go for the Greek version?

Romans not good enough for him?

16 posted on 04/08/2006 4:55:28 PM PDT by Harmless Teddy Bear (Sign up to donate monthly and you will be automatically entered in our "Win a Bear Hug Contest")
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To: NYer
Cowardly title for the article.
17 posted on 04/08/2006 4:56:35 PM PDT by Mike Darancette (In the Land of the Blind the one-eyed man is king.)
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To: NYer

THE SEVENTH PLANET IS DOOMED BY GLOBAL WARMING!
18 posted on 04/08/2006 5:02:33 PM PDT by SquirrelKing (Contrary to popular belief, America is not a democracy, it is a Chucktatorship.)
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To: Harmless Teddy Bear
Apparently Caelus doesn't amount to much--a learned translation found in a couple of Latin works (in Ennius and in Cicero's treatise on the nature of the gods), probably not something that meant anything to an average Roman...no cult associated with him. Even Ouranos doesn't seem to matter very much to the Greeks--a figure in Hesiod's Theogony but not a god that people gave much attention to.
19 posted on 04/08/2006 5:37:09 PM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: NYer

You gotta love how they used "Seventh Planet" in the headline.


20 posted on 04/08/2006 5:43:05 PM PDT by bondjamesbond (RICE 2008)
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