In a Rare View, Rings on Uranus Show Their Changes

NY Times ^ | August 28, 2007 | HENRY FOUNTAIN

[neverdem]

It’s that time of year on Uranus — time for the semiannual ring-plane crossing, when the planet’s ring system appears edge-on to observers on Earth. (Unlike the other planets, Uranus spins on its side, making for extreme changes in viewing angles.) The crossing allows telescopes to take pictures of the rings from the unlighted side, free from the glare that can obscure faint parts of them.

Of course, a year on Uranus is equivalent to 84 Earth years, so this semiannual event is happening for the first time since the planet’s rings were discovered, in 1977. And it’s causing some rethinking about the rings and their stability.

Using infrared images taken by the 10-meter Keck II telescope in Hawaii, Imke de Pater of the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues report in Science Express, an online publication of the journal Science, that the rings have been going through some changes since they were first photographed in 1986 by Voyager 2.

Voyager 2 showed rings that appeared to have dust embedded in them. The new images show a broad, faint cloud of material permeating the whole system, and also show that the rings do not extend as far out from the planet as they did in previous observations.

[neverdem]

Science
Images of Uranus and its rings show the difference in viewing angles.

[neverdem]

astro ping

[InShanghai]

My goodness, someone could have thought of a better title for this report... In a rare view, rings on Uranus show their changes, but I'm having trouble thinking one up.

[AmericanInTokyo]

I BEG your pardon!!??

[Global2010]

Awesome

[johnthebaptistmoore]

A finite number of jokes will be appearing on this thread very soon.

[jedward]

Man...the urge is unbelievable, but.........I’ll resist :)

[jedward]

My first thought too (lol)

[D-fendr]

Yeah, it's too easy, but I'll go first..

Why the view is so rare..

[knarf]

Well, I don’t know nuttin’ ‘bout no rings ... but I know skid marks.

[Izzy Dunne]

It could be that the outer ring, while very bright, is very thin, and thus less visible, when viewed edge-on.

[BerryDingle]

Try dots where the hair used to be!!!

[Izzy Dunne]

Sometimes I wish they would change the name of this planet, just to avoid these fourth grade threads.

[Steely Tom]

It could be that the outer ring, while very bright, is very thin, and thus less visible, when viewed edge-on.

Or that the particles that form it are aligned in some way.

[bert]

I won’t.... how do you make rings on Uranus

[Izzy Dunne]

Yeah, I totally don't understand that alignment stuff. I read that if you made a scale model of Saturn's rings, if it was as thick as a CD, it would have to be four miles in diameter. That's how strict the alignment is.

For what you suggest to be true, they would have to be quite thin in one dimension, and aligned with the planet in that dimension. I don't suggest that that is impossible, but I have no concept of how the physics could make it so.

[TXnMA]

"A finite number of jokes will be appearing on this thread very soon."

True. The infantile are always with us...

[reagan_fanatic]

A dumb question here - are those false color photographs or is that the actual color of Uranus?

[DPMD]

There may be rings on Uranus. But speak for yourself.

[neverdem]

A dumb question here - are those false color photographs or is that the actual color of Uranus?

I don't know.

Unless someone is a failure at reading comprehension, there are no dumb questions, IMHO.

Here's the statement from Keck: "Using the near infrared camera (NIRC2) and adaptive optics on the Keck II telescope on May 28, the team took striking images of the nearly edge-on ring appearing as a bright line bisecting a dim Uranus, which appears dark in the infrared."

SCIENTISTS STUDY CHANGES IN PLANET’S RINGS