Webb snaps infrared picture of Uranus
Click for original Webb false-color image.
In a follow-up to a recent Hubble Space Telescope optical image of Uranus, scientists have now used the Webb Space Telescope to take a comparable picture in the infrared of the gas giant.
Both pictures are to the right, with the Webb picture at the top including the scientists’ annotations.
On the right side of the planet there’s an area of brightening at the pole facing the Sun, known as a polar cap. This polar cap is unique to Uranus – it seems to appear when the pole enters direct sunlight in the summer and vanish in the fall; these Webb data will help scientists understand the currently mysterious mechanism. Webb revealed a surprising aspect of the polar cap: a subtle enhanced brightening at the center of the cap. The sensitivity and longer wavelengths of Webb’s NIRCam may be why we can see this enhanced Uranus polar feature when it has not been seen as clearly with other powerful telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope and Keck Observatory.
At the edge of the polar cap lies a bright cloud as well as a few fainter extended features just beyond the cap’s edge, and a second very bright cloud is seen at the planet’s left limb. Such clouds are typical for Uranus in infrared wavelengths, and likely are connected to storm activity.
The Webb image also captures 11 of Uranus’s 13 rings, which appear much brighter in the infrared than in the optical.
Unlike all other planets in the solar system, Uranus’s rotation is tilted so much that it actually rolls as it orbits the Sun, a motion that is obvious by comparing these pictures with Hubble’s 2014 optical picture.
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Click for original Webb false-color image.
In a follow-up to a recent Hubble Space Telescope optical image of Uranus, scientists have now used the Webb Space Telescope to take a comparable picture in the infrared of the gas giant.
Both pictures are to the right, with the Webb picture at the top including the scientists’ annotations.
On the right side of the planet there’s an area of brightening at the pole facing the Sun, known as a polar cap. This polar cap is unique to Uranus – it seems to appear when the pole enters direct sunlight in the summer and vanish in the fall; these Webb data will help scientists understand the currently mysterious mechanism. Webb revealed a surprising aspect of the polar cap: a subtle enhanced brightening at the center of the cap. The sensitivity and longer wavelengths of Webb’s NIRCam may be why we can see this enhanced Uranus polar feature when it has not been seen as clearly with other powerful telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope and Keck Observatory.
At the edge of the polar cap lies a bright cloud as well as a few fainter extended features just beyond the cap’s edge, and a second very bright cloud is seen at the planet’s left limb. Such clouds are typical for Uranus in infrared wavelengths, and likely are connected to storm activity.
The Webb image also captures 11 of Uranus’s 13 rings, which appear much brighter in the infrared than in the optical.
Unlike all other planets in the solar system, Uranus’s rotation is tilted so much that it actually rolls as it orbits the Sun, a motion that is obvious by comparing these pictures with Hubble’s 2014 optical picture.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
“Uranus’s rotation is tilted so much” – But not nearly as much as Venus. Which (bizarrely to me) never gets much discussion wrt Solar System formation, etc.
To clarify, Venus’s polar inclination is approximately 177 degrees, so it rotates “upside down” as compared to Earth.
Since the designation of a planet’s North Pole is determined by the direction of its rotation in accordance with the “*right-hand rule”, in a sense it is more clearly descriptive to say that Venus “rotates backwards” compared to Earth.
In the same sense, it is more clearly descriptive to say that Uranus “rolls”, because it’s polar axis is tilted to nearly the same as the orbital plane, even though it is technically true that Venus is inclined to a greater number of degrees.
* Right-hand rule: if the fingers of the right hand point in the direction of the planet’s rotation, the thumb indicates that the planet’s North Pole is “up”. Since the Venus rotation is roughly opposite to Earth’s, we have to turn our right hand almost completely over to get our fingers to point that way, and our thumb now points down! Thus, Venus’s North Pole is about where our South Pole is!
Uranus also has virtacle Ring simular to Saturn’s but no signs of Romulans unless their using their Cloaking Device