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Uranus: Whacky weather, odd rings Observations with the Keck II Telescope show the solar system's seventh planet still holds a few surprises. Francis Reddy November 10, 2004 In the southern hemisphere of Uranus, as summer draws to a close, methane storm clouds brew beneath the planet's thick blue-green haze. New observations from two research teams using the Keck II 10-meter telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii reveal unprecedented cloud behavior, fast winds, and a unique ring system. Uranus has a reputation of being, well, dull. "When the Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by Uranus in 1986, it saw almost no discrete...

New images of the planet Uranus reveal more diversity in cloud features than ever seen before. The new images, from the Keck Telescope in Hawaii, provide insight into some of the most enigmatic weather in the solar system, researchers said today at a meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. "The cloud features range from small to large, from dim and diffuse to sharp and bright, from rapidly evolving systems to stable features that last for years," said Lawrence Sromovsky of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Space Science and Engineering Center. A large storm in the...

If Uranus seems closer this evening, it is. Today, the planet (its name is pronounced you-rah-nus) is at its closest point to Earth, only 1.77 billion miles away -- 19 times the distance from the Earth to the sun. Patient people with binoculars can find this blue-green world in Aquarius. Some notes: Once you know which dot of light is Uranus, you might be able to find it with your eyes alone -- but only if you have excellent vision and a clear, dark sky away from city light pollution, says Newsday. Next week, once the moon is out of...

New Hubble Photos of Uranus and Neptune Jan 22, 2004 - Image credit: Hubble Atmospheric features on Uranus and Neptune are revealed in images taken with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph and the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The observations were taken in August 2003. The top row reveals Uranus and Neptune in natural colors, showing the planets as they would appear if we could see them through a telescope. The images are made of exposures taken with filters sensitive to red, green, and blue light. In the bottom images, astronomers used different color filters...

TINY MOONS DISCOVERED AT URANUS Astronomers using NASAs Hubble Space Telescope discovered two of the smallest moons yet found orbiting Uranus, NASA announced. The two moons, each about 12 to 16 kilometers in diameter, are so faint they were not detected by the Voyager 2 spacecraft, which discovered 10 small moons when it flew by Uranus in 1986. Uranus now has 24 known moons. Astronomers hope to learn more about the orbits of the moons and their interaction with other Uranus moons with further Hubble observations. They also want to understand what role the newly discovered moons may play in...

Astronomers have found two of the smallest moons ever spotted around Uranus, brining the distant planet's satellite tally to 24, the third most in the solar system. The moons are 8 to 10 miles across (12 to 16 km) -- about the size of San Francisco -- and were discovered with the Hubble Space Telescope. With greater technology, astronomers are finding smaller moons around the giant planets with remarkable frequency, especially over the past two years. Jupiter leads the way with more than 50 known moons, Saturn has more than 30. More moons are sure to be found as the...

Tuesday, 31 December, 2002, 11:34 GMTPlanet Uranus caught on VLT A picture showing Uranus and moons (pic: ESO) The "Very Large Telescope" (VLT) has caught a remarkable image of the planet Uranus circled by some of its moons. The rings of the planet - which is 3,000 million kilometres away from Earth - were clearly displayed in the image. The rings are almost undetectable from Earth in visible light. The VLT is located at the European Southern Observatory's Paranal Observatory in Chile. The image was obtained in near-infrared, and contains seven of its moons. VLT is based at Paranal in...

Explanation: Cosmic dust clouds and young, energetic stars inhabit this telescopic vista, less than 500 light-years away toward the northern boundary of Corona Australis, the Southern Crown. The dust clouds effectively block light from more distant background stars in the Milky Way. But the striking complex of reflection nebulae cataloged as NGC 6726, 6727, and IC 4812 produce a characteristic blue color as light from the region's young hot stars is reflected by the cosmic dust. The dust also obscures from view stars still in the process of formation. At the left, smaller yellowish nebula NGC 6729 bends around young...

A new view of the Eagle Nebula, one of the two largest and sharpest images Hubble Space Telescope has ever taken, is released by NASA for Hubble's 15th anniversary April 25, 2005. The new Eagle Nebula image reveals a tall, dense tower of gas being sculpted by ultraviolet light from a group of massive, hot stars. During the 15 years Hubble has orbited the Earth, it has taken more than 700,000 photos of the cosmos.

Embedded in these Eagle Nebula towers, which are sometimes called elephant trunks, are stars under creation. And in a short span of 20 years, you can see how the stars are slowly blowing the pillars apart. This is leading some press officials to call the structures “pillars of destruction.” And astronomers can chart how everything is changing over time. “I’m impressed by how transitory these structures are. They are actively being ablated away before our very eyes,” stated Paul Scowen of Arizona State University in Tempe, one of the astronomers who led the 1995 observations.

In 1995, the world was astonished by the image of a group of 4-light-year-tall columns located in the Eagle Nebula, 7,000 light years from here. So unimaginable it was that someone called them the Pillars of Creation. The only problem is that the pillars didn't really exist. Something had destroyed them more than a thousand years ago. It's a natural thought. Limited by our understanding of time, we look at objects in space as if they were mountains or the ocean. We genuinely perceive these stellar landscapes as something that is up there fixed, secure, rooted in our reality, the...

The famous "pillars of creation" – clouds of dust and gas imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope, are no more – a supernova blast wave has blown them apart. But their ghostly image will linger for another thousand years because of the time it takes for light to travel from them to Earth. The pillars have been astronomical icons since Hubble imaged them in 1995 (scroll down for Hubble image). They are part of a larger star-forming region called the Eagle Nebula, which lies 7000 light years away. That means we are seeing the pillars as they were 7000 years...

SEATTLE – They helped open the public's eyes to the wonders of space when they were first photographed in 1995, but a new study suggests the famous Pillars of Creation in the Eagle Nebula might have already been toppled long ago, and that what the Hubble Space Telescope actually captured was their ghost image. A new picture of the Eagle Nebula shot by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope show the intact pillars next to a giant cloud of glowing dust scorched by the heat of a massive stellar explosion known as a supernova [image]. Astronomers think the supernova's shock wave knocked...

Explanation: To celebrate 25 years (1990-2015) of exploring the Universe from low Earth orbit, the Hubble Space Telescope's cameras were used to revisit its most iconic image. The result is this sharper, wider view of the region dubbed the Pillars of Creation, first imaged by Hubble in 1995. Stars are forming deep inside the towering structures. The light-years long columns of cold gas and dust are some 6,500 light-years distant in M16, the Eagle Nebula, toward the constellation Serpens. Sculpted and eroded by the energetic ultraviolet light and powerful winds from M16's cluster of young, massive stars, the cosmic pillars...

Explanation: What stars compose the Andromeda galaxy? To better understand, a group of researchers studied the nearby spiral by composing the largest image ever taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. The result, called the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury (PHAT), involved thousands of observations, hundreds of fields, spanned about a third of the galaxy, and resolved over 100 million stars. In the featured composite image, the central part of the galaxy is seen on the far left, while a blue spiral arm is prominent on the right. The brightest stars, scattered over the frame, are actually Milky Way foreground stars. The...

Explanation: What do the following things have in common: a cone, the fur of a fox, and a Christmas tree? Answer: they all occur in the constellation of the unicorn (Monoceros). Pictured as a star forming region and cataloged as NGC 2264, the complex jumble of cosmic gas and dust is about 2,700 light-years distant and mixes reddish emission nebulae excited by energetic light from newborn stars with dark interstellar dust clouds. Where the otherwise obscuring dust clouds lie close to the hot, young stars they also reflect starlight, forming blue reflection nebulae. The image spans about the diameter of...

Explanation: Soft hues, partially lit orbs, a thin trace of the ring, and slight shadows highlight this understated view of the majestic surroundings of the giant planet Saturn. Looking nearly back toward the Sun, the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn captured crescent phases of Saturn and its moon Rhea in color a few years ago. As striking as the above image is, it is but a single frame from a 60-frame silent movie where Rhea can be seen gliding in front of its parent world. Since Cassini was nearly in the plane of Saturn's rings, the normally impressive rings...

Explanation: Get out your red/blue glasses and check out this awesome stereo view of another world. The scene was recorded by Apollo 17 mission commander Eugene Cernan on December 11, 1972, one orbit before descending to land on the Moon. The stereo anaglyph was assembled from two photographs (AS17-147-22465, AS17-147-22466) captured from his vantage point on board the Lunar Module Challenger as he and Dr. Harrison Schmitt flew over Apollo 17's landing site in the Taurus-Littrow Valley. The broad, sunlit face of the mountain dubbed South Massif rises near the center of the frame, above the dark floor of Taurus-Littrow...

Explanation: Near the center of this sharp cosmic portrait, at the heart of the Orion Nebula, are four hot, massive stars known as the Trapezium. Tightly gathered within a region about 1.5 light-years in radius, they dominate the core of the dense Orion Nebula Star Cluster. Ultraviolet ionizing radiation from the Trapezium stars, mostly from the brightest star Theta-1 Orionis C powers the complex star forming region's entire visible glow. About three million years old, the Orion Nebula Cluster was even more compact in its younger years and a dynamical study indicates that runaway stellar collisions at an earlier age...

Explanation: The plane of our Milky Way Galaxy runs through this complex and beautiful skyscape. At the northwestern edge of the constellation Vela (the Sails) the telescopic frame is over 10 degrees wide, centered on the brightest glowing filaments of the Vela Supernova Remnant, an expanding debris cloud from the death explosion of a massive star. Light from the supernova explosion that created the Vela remnant reached Earth about 11,000 years ago. In addition to the shocked filaments of glowing gas, the cosmic catastrophe also left behind an incredibly dense, rotating stellar core, the Vela Pulsar. Some 800 light-years distant,...