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Kelly Lepo

5 months ago • •

Kelly Lepo
5 months ago • •

Here is a new 4-color #JWST image of the planet Uranus, along with its rings and moons, adding two filters to the 2-color version released earlier this year.

The labeled blue, star-like things are Uranus' moons, including its five major moons: Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon. We also see a smattering of the smaller moons near the rings, named after characters from the works of William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope.

More: https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2023/news-2023-150

An image titled James Webb Space Telescope, Uranus, September 4, 2023. An image with a black background, a glowing orb near the center surrounded by rings. There are smudges that are background galaxies scattered throughout the image and several bright blue point sources that are the planet’s moons.

From top to bottom, there are 5 large moons: Oberon, Titania, Umbriel, Ariel, and Miranda. Close the planet are smaller moons 9 smaller moons. Clockwise they are: Perdita, Rosalind, Puck, Belinda, Desdemona, Cressida, Bianca, Portia, and Juliet.

At the bottom left are compass arrows indicating the orientation of the image on the sky. The north arrow points in the 12 o’clock direction. The east arrow points toward 6 o’clock. Below the image is a color key showing which filters were used to create the image and which visible-light color is assigned to each infrared-light filter. From left to right, Webb NIRCam filters are F140M (blue), F210M (cyan), F300M (yellow), and F460M (orange). A scale bar at the lower right of the image is about one-seventh the total width of the image, and text below it reads 16 arcseconds.

#jwst

in reply to Kelly Lepo

Kelly Lepo

in reply to Kelly Lepo • 5 months ago • •

Uranus is an oddball planet — it spins on its side, tilted about 98 degrees so that its rotational axis is almost parallel to the plane of its orbit. This means that for about a quarter of its 84-year-long orbit, one pole gets all of the sunlight (summer), and the other is plunged into darkness (winter). Uranus is approaching its northern summer solstice, which will happen in 2028.

In this image, we can see the bright white northern polar cap and bright storms at lower latitudes.

The planet Uranus on a black background. The planet appears blue with a large, white patch taking up the right half. The patch is whitest at the center, then fades into blue at it expands from right to left. A thin outline of Uranus is also white. Around the planet is a system of nested rings. The outermost ring is the brightest while the innermost ring is the faintest. Unlike Saturn’s horizontal rings, the rings of Uranus are vertical and so they appear to surround the planet in an oval shape. There are 9 blueish white dots scattered around the rings.

This entry was edited (5 months ago)

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