Posted on 04/23/2018 8:12:33 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Researchers have long wondered about the composition of the clouds high up in Uranus' sky — specifically, whether they're dominated by ammonia ice, as at Jupiter and Saturn, or by hydrogen sulfide ice. The answer has proved elusive, because it's tough to make observations with the required detail on distant Uranus. (Not only are Jupiter and Saturn closer to Earth, they have also hosted dedicated orbiter missions. Uranus has been visited just once — a brief flyby by NASA's Voyager 2 probe in January 1986.)
Irwin and his colleagues studied Uranus' air using the Near-Infrared Integral Field Spectrometer (NIFS), an instrument on the 26-foot (8 meters) Gemini North telescope in Hawaii. NIFS scrutinized sunlight reflected from the atmosphere just above Uranus' cloud tops — and spotted the signature of hydrogen sulfide.
"Only a tiny amount remains above the clouds as a saturated vapor," study co-author Leigh Fletcher, from the University of Leicester in England, said in the same statement. "And this is why it is so challenging to capture the signatures of ammonia and hydrogen sulfide above cloud decks of Uranus. The superior capabilities of Gemini finally gave us that lucky break."
Neptune's clouds are likely similar to those of Uranus, the researchers said. The big difference between the clouds of these two "ice giants" and those of Jupiter and Saturn probably trace to the worlds' formation environments: Uranus and Neptune coalesced much farther from the sun than the two gas giants did.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Urectum? U damn near kilt'um!
LOL
Um, who’s been up there to smell it?
Um, who’s been up there to smell it?
Um, who’s been up there to smell it?
I still call it YOUR-ANUS. So, bite on that all you science redictioning fly-boys.
Excuse the triple comment. I only hit the key once, but it came out three times.
Excuse the triple comment. I only hit the key once, but it came out three times.
Counting them down now.
Makes sense in a few ways.
5.56mm
I remember Jim Bell of the Mars rovers team admitting that they just didn't think of equipping the rovers with mics until it was too late.
My point being that gas spectrometry will eventually make it in to probes, especially those destined for the gas giants.
Did they finally end that stupid joke once and for all?
*distinct pleasure to ping you*
;-D
Well, so does yourz.
I did. 3 times!
Good luck on the journey from earth, which will take at least nine years according to Voyager.
If you can survive that, and those insanely cold temps, you might have about a half-second to whiff the atmosphere.
If you survived the descent into Uranus' dense clouds, and not get crushed by the pressure.
But I have read that said pressure makes for lakes of pure diamond.
So Uranus MAY smell like a$$, but you'll be rich. Which is nice.
So there is a paper mill on Uranus?
It’s just a good thing your nose is a long way
from Uranus...
I think there is a cheese factory there,
where it’s cut.
Bennet? Hell, I broke it!
Rainbows and unicorns
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