Posted on 10/10/2024 7:58:38 PM PDT by Red Badger
Hubble And New Horizons are 9 billion kilometers (5.6 million miles) apart but they can still work together.
Uranus as seen by Hubble (left) and New Horizons (right).
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, Samantha Hasler (MIT), Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC), New Horizons Planetary Science Theme Team Image Processing Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Joseph Olmsted (STScI)
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Studying exoplanets is not easy. Despite enormous steps forward in technology, models, and observational tricks, astronomers are still looking at small dots either blocking some starlight or reflecting it while being next to a bright object that easily outshines them. It requires practice, and researchers have decided to use Uranus to get better at it.
They used two space-based observatories. Around Earth, there’s the Hubble Space Telescope, which can deliver detailed views of the icy planet even when it is 2.7 billion kilometers (1.7 billion miles) away. Then there is New Horizons. The spacecraft traveled past Pluto nine years ago, and then by a small primordial object called Arrokoth. Back in September 2023, it was over 10 billion kilometers (6.5 billion miles) from Uranus – and researchers made it look at it.
Hubble can see the rings and even storms on Uranus, but for New Horizons – not designed for these types of observations – the ice giant planet is just a pale azure dot. It is not dissimilar from how some exoplanets have been seen by telescopes. So the team was able to combine the two to better understand how the little information from a tiny dot translates to global properties of a planet.
"While we expected Uranus to appear differently in each filter of the observations, we found that Uranus was actually dimmer than predicted in the New Horizons data taken from a different viewpoint," lead author Samantha Hasler of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and New Horizons science team collaborator, said in a statement.
The observations showed that the planet’s brightness did not change as the planet rotated, and this was true for both observatories. Despite the presence of clouds on gas giants, they might not always have a measurable effect on observations. The orientation of the planet and how much light it reflects also matter, and New Horizons actually showed that exoplanets might be dimmer during certain phases.
"These landmark New Horizons studies of Uranus from a vantage point unobservable by any other means add to the mission's treasure trove of new scientific knowledge, and have, like many other datasets obtained in the mission, yielded surprising new insights into the worlds of our Solar System," added New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute.
NASA has two upcoming missions that will study exoplanets. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, set to launch in 2027, and the future Habitable Worlds Observatory, which is in an early planning phase.
"Studying how known benchmarks like Uranus appear in distant imaging can help us have more robust expectations when preparing for these future missions," concluded Hasler. "And that will be critical to our success.
This work was presented this week at the 56th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences, in Boise, Idaho.
Ping!..................
Let the games begin.
“NASA team-up on Uranus”
Yours maybe, but not mine.
I found an unusual rock, and looked up online for answers:
Pre-historic, petrified dinosaur . . . excrement.
Talk about “parasites.”
Yet I wonder, now without any rad detector, what exactly might otherwise be in this stuff?
I think I have original 8x10 full glossy photographs of both Saturn and Uranus, all of them much full resolution without circles and arrows.
it is a shame we lost the secrets of space travel back in the 70s, and all the telemetry too.
My first thought? We, or at least we Americans need a new name for Uranus. For the vast majority, once you see that name, you immediately go into “giggle suppression mode”.
Maybe a poll should be taken.
Greek form: Ouranos....................
Latin form: Caelum
Don’t you just hate it when NASA teams up on Uranus????
Sounds painful
So, that’s “better”?
Thank you for the in info, though.
I didn’t know that.
Tx. I have a theory, that some of the rocks I have found, did not originate locally. Instead, some landed here as a result of major impacts - sometimes as much as 1 - 2 thousand miles away. (Skipping the other long-range driver: glacier forces.)
First one in 3 months.
Another team up on Uranus? Good God man. I’m still trying to figure out what to do about the rings around Uranus.
What about Rectanus
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