NASA incredible picture of Uranus

This image of Uranus was taken by the NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) on the James Webb Space Telescope of NASA and shows the planet and its rings very clearly.

infrared uranus

The image from James Webb perfectly captures the seasonal north polar "cap" of Uranus, including the bright, white, inner circle and the dark band at the bottom of the polar cap.

The faint inner and outer rings of Uranus are also visible in this image, including the elusive Zeta Ring – the extremely faint and diffuse ring closest to the planet.

The image from Webb also shows 9 of the planet's 27 moons. They are the blue dots surrounding the planet's rings. Clockwise starting at 2 o'clock, they are: Rosalind, Puck, Belinda, Desdemona, Cressida, Bianca, Portia, Juliet and Perdita.

Uranus

The orbits of these moons share their parent planet's 98-degree inclination to the plane of the solar system.

A day in the sky lasts about 17 hours, so the rotation of the planet is relatively fast.

This makes it extremely difficult for modern observatories like Webb to capture a simple image of the entire planet. Storms and other atmospheric features and the planet's moons move in minutes.

This image combines several longer and shorter exposures of this dynamic system to correct for these small changes over the observation time.

See the image at high resolution

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Written by giorgos

George still wonders what he's doing here ...

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