Pluto has a heart, Saturn has rings, Mars is red, Jupiter has storms, and Saturn has rings. On the other hand, most people know little nothing about Uranus, save for the awful puns that go along with its name. Uranus, on the other hand, is gradually coming into focus. For the first time, scientists have photographed Uranus' whole planet in the infrared region of the light spectrum.
NASA has received images of the strange auroras on Uranus taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Voyager 2 spacecraft, which flew by the planet in 1986. Hubble Space Telescope captured images of Uranus' light display in optical and ultraviolet light in 2011. Then, in 2012 and 2014, a team from the Paris Observatory used the Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph to photograph the auroras. They were able to detect intense bursts of solar winds that caused the aurora on Uranus to flare. The scientists also discovered that the auroras revolve with the planet, and for the first time since Voyager, they identified the planet's magnetic field.
About Auroras and Uranus
Every planet in the Solar System, sans Mercury (per The Conversation), has auroras, according to EarthSky. Magnificent and spooky light flashes emerge when high atmospheric gases like nitrogen or oxygen combine with streams of charged particles. Solar winds, the planet's ionosphere (the layer of the atmosphere ionized by solar or cosmic radiation), and an uncommon phenomenon known as "moon volcanism" are all possible sources of these particles. The moon's volcanic activity generates charged gasses that convey an electrical current to the planet's atmosphere, causing this phenomenon.
The interaction of the solar wind, a stream of charged particles originating from the sun, with the planet's magnetic field causes auroras on Uranus, much as it does on Earth. However, because Uranus is so distant from Earth, these auroras act differently from Earth's renowned northern and southern polar lights.
Scientists Make Latest, Most Detailed Map of Uranus' Mysterious Auroras
According to Space.com, the British-led team created the most precise map of Uranus' enigmatic auroras to date. From the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, the researchers utilized NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) in Hawaii to study the strange ice giant that circles the sun 19 times further than Earth.
Uranus revolves on an axis that is almost perpendicular to the sun. For a quarter of the planet's long year, which will last 84 Earth years, the planet practically rolls around the sun on its side, with its poles pointing the star nearly directly.
Furthermore, unlike Earth, Jupiter, or Saturn, Uranus' magnetic poles are not aligned with its geographical poles, but are inclined 60 degrees away from them. As a result, Uranus' auroras appear in unusual places rather than above the planet's geographical poles.
Auroras on Uranus Stretches Even Into Southern Hemisphere; But Why?
The northern aurora spans from the northern hemisphere to the equator. Emma Thomas, the University of Leicester's doctorate student who conducted the observations, told in the same Space.com report the natural light has displayed even dips into the southern hemisphere.
The scientists divided their observations into three eight-hour intervals across three days to photograph Uranus' whole surface. Researchers has to time each observation window to meet Uranus' 17-hour rotation cycle. When they merge the data, the result will be the most comprehensive map of the surface of the faraway planet in the infrared spectrum.
However, scientists still understand very little about these displays and the factors that drive them, according to Thomas. Thomas added that understanding how auroras change over time might reveal new details about the systems that cause this unpredictable magnetic field.
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