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Rare Alignment Gives NASA A Chance To Peer Into Uranus
IFL Science ^ | April 24, 2025 | Dr. Alfredo Carpineti

Posted on 04/25/2025 9:22:55 PM PDT by Red Badger

Fifteen observatories across the US, Mexico, and Hawai’i looked at the planet eclipsing a star.

Uranus, its rings, and some of its moons as seen by JWST.

Image credit: NASA, ESA,CSA, STScI, Joseph DePasqual

************************************************************

On April 7, 2025, star HIP 16271 was occulted by Uranus. As a star, it is by no means famous. A yellow-white star in the constellation of Taurus, not bright enough to be visible to the naked eye given its distance – about 400 light-years away – but bright enough to allow astronomers to look into the atmosphere of Uranus in great detail for the first time in 30 years.

Uranus is an ice giant planet with a thick atmosphere over a hot mantle of water, ammonia, and methane ices. Humanity has only sent one spacecraft to the planet, Voyager 2 in 1986, which had a chance to look at the planet up close. Occultations of bright stars are an excellent probe for the atmosphere. As the star begins to disappear, hidden behind the planet, some of the light filters to the upper layers of the Uranian atmosphere, providing novel insights.

“As Uranus began to occult the star, the planet’s atmosphere refracted the starlight, causing the star to appear to gradually dim before being blocked completely. The reverse happened at the end of the occultation, making what we call a light curve. By observing the occultation from many large telescopes, we are able to measure the light curve and determine Uranus’ atmospheric properties at many altitude layers,” William Saunders, science principal investigator and analysis lead of the Uranus Stellar Occultation Campaign 2025, said in a statement.

And it was a big campaign. It involved 30 astronomers and 15 different observatories from Colorado to Hawai’i, and even two in Mexico. The data will provide new information about the temperature and density of the atmosphere, which will also be useful in the preparation of a future mission. It will also help refine properties of the planet, such as its motion and rings.

“This was the first time we have collaborated on this scale for an occultation,” said Saunders. “I am extremely grateful to each member of the team and each observatory for taking part in this extraordinary event. NASA will use the observations of Uranus to determine how energy moves around the atmosphere and what causes the upper layers to be inexplicably hot. Others will use the data to measure Uranus’ rings, its atmospheric turbulence, and its precise orbit around the Sun.”

It might be surprising to know that there is a large uncertainty in the position and orbit of Uranus, of over 160 kilometers (100 miles). Sure, the planet is almost 3 billion kilometers from us (1.8 billion miles), so that might seem to be peanuts over such a vast distance – but it matters for detailed astronomical observations or when we send back another probe. You do not want to miss the planet.

To prepare for this occultation and to help refine the position of Uranus, the team collaborated with international partners on an occultation with a much dimmer star that happened on November 12, 2024 and was visible in Asia. That set the basis for this recent work.

“As scientists, we do our best work when we collaborate. This was a team effort between NASA scientists, academic researchers, and amateur astronomers,” explained Emma Dahl, from Caltech. “The atmospheres of the gas and ice giant planets [Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune] are exceptional atmospheric laboratories because they don’t have solid surfaces. This allows us to study cloud formation, storms, and wind patterns without the extra variables and effects a surface produces, which can complicate simulations very quickly.”

There are several dim occultations happening in the coming years that NASA hopes to observe, hopefully from space as well, but the exciting one will be in 2031 with a star that is even brighter than HIP 16271.


TOPICS: Astronomy; History; Science; UFO's
KEYWORDS: astronomy; pullmyfinger; science; solarsystem; tippedaxis; uranus; uranusjokes; xplanets
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1 posted on 04/25/2025 9:22:55 PM PDT by Red Badger
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To: Red Badger

🤣🤣. Laughing myself to sleep.


2 posted on 04/25/2025 9:23:48 PM PDT by cowboyusa
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To: Red Badger

NASA PEERING INTO URANUS PING!..................


3 posted on 04/25/2025 9:23:52 PM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegals are put up in 5 Star hotels....................)
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To: Red Badger

Dr. Ben Dover approves


4 posted on 04/25/2025 9:26:05 PM PDT by bigbob (Yes. We ARE going back!)
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To: Red Badger

Classic...weirdos.


5 posted on 04/25/2025 9:28:22 PM PDT by DesertRhino (2016 Star Wars, 2020 The Empire Strikes Back, 2025... RETURN OF THE JEDI...)
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To: Red Badger

Oh dear.


6 posted on 04/25/2025 9:34:19 PM PDT by lee martell
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To: Red Badger

This should be amusing...

CC


7 posted on 04/25/2025 9:36:32 PM PDT by Celtic Conservative (My cats are more amusing than 200 channels worth of TV.)
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To: Red Badger; SunkenCiv

I remember how an eclipse like this in 1977 allowed us to discover that Uranus has rings. I’m surprised the article didn’t mention that.


8 posted on 04/25/2025 9:37:02 PM PDT by Berosus (I wish I had as much faith in God as liberals have in government.)
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To: Berosus

I remember that as well.................


9 posted on 04/25/2025 9:40:53 PM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegals are put up in 5 Star hotels....................)
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To: Red Badger

at least on onlyfans I could make some $. Why should I give it away for free?


10 posted on 04/25/2025 9:41:53 PM PDT by Strict9
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To: Berosus

“remember how an eclipse like this in 1977 allowed us to discover that Uranus has rings.”

I guarantee I have zero piercings there.


11 posted on 04/25/2025 9:47:23 PM PDT by Zack Attack (✔)
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To: Red Badger

I Cannot Lie, I Like Big Planets
(Ghetto Haiku)

I see Uranus
Gal, I wanna get wit’cha
And take your picture


12 posted on 04/25/2025 9:48:01 PM PDT by tumblindice (America's founding fathers: all armed conservatives)
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To: Red Badger

to hell with Mars. Just proceed directly to put men on Uranus.


13 posted on 04/25/2025 9:48:52 PM PDT by samkatz
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To: samkatz

Musk will never be interested in Uranus. A guy with 14 kids just doesn’t swing that way.


14 posted on 04/25/2025 10:02:15 PM PDT by TigersEye (The Golden Age of MAGA is upon us!)
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To: Red Badger

I don’t want NASA peering into Uranus, but I sure don’t want them peering into MINE!


15 posted on 04/25/2025 10:02:21 PM PDT by faucetman (Just the facts, ma'am, Just the facts )
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To: Red Badger

Now where is the photo of Katie Couric?


16 posted on 04/25/2025 10:05:51 PM PDT by anton
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To: Red Badger
Astronomers are, at heart, 9 year-olds. Why else did they choose to name one planet using a Greek name, when all the others are Roman?

An endless supply of potty jokes and double-entendres. You can't do much with the name "Caelus."

17 posted on 04/25/2025 10:12:22 PM PDT by Disambiguator
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To: Red Badger; annie laurie; Knitting A Conundrum; Viking2002; Ernest_at_the_Beach; Mmogamer; ...
So that's what I've been feeling...
· join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark ·
· post new topic · subscribe ·
Google news searches: exoplanet · exosolar · extrasolar ·
X-Planets

18 posted on 04/25/2025 10:19:16 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Putin should skip ahead to where he kills himself in the bunker.)
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To: Red Badger
Can the International Astronomical Union (IAU) just rename this magnificent celestial orb so that Americans will stop cracking bunghole jokes?

I mean, they demoted Pluto. What would it take to replace such an undignified name with something new.

I suggest "Asterías" --Greek for "starfish".

19 posted on 04/25/2025 10:29:04 PM PDT by Drew68 (I haven’t seen the Democrats this mad since yesterday. Save some tears for tomorrow.)
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Y'know, it's not just FReepers...

20 posted on 04/25/2025 10:32:23 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Putin should skip ahead to where he kills himself in the bunker.)
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