Highannus port?
Posted on 02/08/2019 7:01:28 PM PST by EdnaMode
The appearance of a massive white cap on Uranus may seem alarming, but as planetary scientists are learning, this is what a prolonged summer looks like on the remote ice giant.
Ice giants Uranus and Neptune have water-rich interiors coated with hydrogen, helium, and a pinch of methane, the latter of which gives these outer planets their distinctive cyan complexion. Unlike Earth, where seasons last just a few months, Neptune and Uranus experience seasons that last for decades, resulting in strange and intense atmospheric phenomena.
New images released by the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program highlight a evolving atmospheric events on both ice giants, namely an extended white cap over Uranus’ north pole and a new dark vortex on Neptune. A long-term side project of the Hubble program, OPAL is an annual effort to map these two planets when their orbital paths bring them closest to Earth. The new data, captured during the autumn of 2018, are providing important new insights into the seasonal variations on both Neptune and Uranus.
“The yearly observations are helping us to understand the frequency of storms, as well as their longevity,” Amy Simon, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center who leads the OPAL mission, told Gizmodo. “That’s important because these planets are quite far from the Sun, so this will help constrain how they are forming and more about the internal heat and structure of these planets. Most of the extrasolar planets that have been found are this size of planet, though at all sorts of distances from their parent stars.”
(Excerpt) Read more at gizmodo.com ...
It was the chili I had for lunch
I think mina’s kinda purty.
Here we go.
Mine’s
I refuse to talk about Uranus .
… Uranus Looks Totally Messed Up Right Now …How judgmental.
Hehe... hehe... you said anus. Hehe.
Beautiful.
The headline, that is.
Globull warming caused by Trump.
Somebody must be Skype’n in the bathroom again...
By now, you should know better, than to eat at Chipotle! :P
Highannus port?
What? Cameras everywhere.
Said the National Enquirer to Jeff Bezos.
Don Lemon gets that a lot.
I beg your pardon?
and what happened to it’s moon, Urectum?
An old joke -
Why’s the Starship Enterprise like a roll of TP?
Both circle Uranus looking for Klingons.
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