Hubble Brings Distant Rings into Focus (Uranus)

[windansea]

This new Hubble Space Telescope image of the planet Uranus shows its rings and several satellites. It was released yesterday. The region outside the planet was enhanced in brightness to make things more visible.

The outermost ring is brighter on the lower side, where it is wider. It is made of dust and small pebbles, which create a thin, dark, and almost vertical line across the right side of Uranus, astronomers said.

The bright satellite on the lower right corner is Ariel, which has a snowy white surface. Five small satellites with dark surfaces can be seen just outside the rings. Clockwise from the top, they are: Desdemona, Belinda, Portia, Cressida, and Puck.
http://www.space.com/imageoftheday/image_of_day_040123.html

[Bronco69]

1. Beautiful picture!

I've never seen the rings of Uranus so clearly before. :-)

[windansea]

3. pretty cool....n/t

[Wonk]

35. Here's another, even clearer (Hubble's NICMOS view).

(snip)

This false-colour image of Saturn, taken with Hubble's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS), shows the planet's reflected infrared light.

more...
http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/SEMOGY374OD_index_1.html

[Benhurst]

2. And to think we're going to lose Hubble sooner than planned

on the whim of that ignorant squatter in the White House!

I can hear Franklin and Jefferson spinning in their graves. :hurts:

[Snow]

15. Wonder if that new spaceship of Bert Rutan's

will be ready in time to rescue the Hubble?

[Longhorn79]

24. Scaled Composites

will be lucky to make the two little hops successfully. The hardest part of the design: the hybrid rocket motor, was contracted out anyway. They are still light years behind NASA.

[AndyTiedye]

30. Whoever Wins the X-Prize Will Have Investors Lining Up to Throw Money

They think someone will win it this year.

The infusion of cash will likely speed things up a bit.

[Zero Gravitas]

44. nope

The rutan thing is a sub-orbital design, it can't go into orbit and it can't get anywhere near Hubble unfortunately. One of the greatest scientific instruments ever is being sacrificed for the whim of the little buffoon in the White House to pay for some PNAC fantasy of having space weapons to scare the darkies with. Make no mistake that is what this space proposal is about. They say they want to build a scalable infrastructure for exploration but all they want is cheap access to earth orbit so they can put weapons platforms there.

[Guaranteed]

4. Wow...that's spectacular...nt

[JitterbugPerfume]

5. absolutely breathtaking

better enjoy it because Hubble is destined for the space junk heap

[ConcernedCanuk]

6. Awesome ! ! - looked like a great Wallpaper, so I "flipped" it . .

.
.

[windansea]

7. cool..how'd you do that?

[Occulus]

12. Photoshop, or the gimp

one of thw two, but the gimp is free...

www.gimp.org

The toolset icons were ripped from Photoshop, and the gimp can load and save in Adobe's proprietary .psd format. It also handles layers and paths, and does just about everything Photoshop can do. And did I mention that the gimp is free? :)

[windansea]

13. I have PS...but how did you post the flipped pic?

seems to have the same URL

will check out the gimp...reminds me of that movie where the gun shop guys had a "gimp" chained up in the basement

[ConcernedCanuk]

26. Here's a free site to upload - it's easy

.
.

http://207.137.168.225/

It'll give you an "addy" - then just copy and paste into your post

oh - 'nuther hint

I'm keeping track of my "uploads" addresses in an Excel spreadsheet, but even Notepad would work too . .

Enjoy !

[windansea]

27. muchas gracias my northern friend!!

[alfredo]

39. Love GIMP. 2.0 should be out soon.

You OSX people, you can get GIMP through Fink. It's really good.

http://fink.sourceforge.net/index.php

It runs through X11 in your utilities folder.

If you get it, you can ask me how to set it up.

[Tripper11]

14. Great minds CC !

I hadn't even read the thread, I saw the pic, grabbed it, flipped it and set it as wallpaper.

Beautiful picture.

[alfredo]

38. Same here.

Used GIMP because Photoshop takes too long to launch.

[bamademo]

8. Are there Klingons circling Uranus?

Someone had to say it. :evilgrin:

[Ripley]

10. Hah! I got that!

Trekker.

[PsychoDad]

9. Wow...

That is beautiful...
Are those bright spots in the atmosphere storms?

[windansea]

11. don't know

article doesn't say

[ozone_man]

16. Another Hubble pic of Uranus.

Could red spots be similar to those on Jupiter?

[arwalden]

17. I Love This Stuff... Thanks For Posting The Photo and Story

[ozone_man]

18. Oops, sorry, didn't think it was that large. n/t

[DebJ]

19. awesome....thanks..."mars" would end this type of info too...

[windansea]

20. chimpy's manned mars mission won't fly

unmanned probes are better..less expensive

we should build a new hubble when this one get's too old

[LifeDuringWartime]

21. well,

the plan was to service the hubble one last time so that it would still be operational by the time its replacement went up, but.... who knows now.

[Longhorn79]

23. I heard that Hubble mission was canceled

I just read that the next scheduled mission you are referring to was cancelled, so we'll just keep getting pictures until they suck, I guess. I bet we could build a helluva telescope at our moon base.

[Kitsune]

22. GO Hubble GO!

<3 t3h hubbl3

[tabasco]

25. A pretty nice planet, but ...

our beautiful Earth is the gem of the solar system!

[frogfromthenorth2]

28. Not as long as Chimpy is in power... Makes this gem looks horrible

[chenGOD]

42. Not at the rate we have been destroying it.

From ancient man's habit of slash and burn farming to current man's habit of polluting the atmosphere, us humans have been doing a good job of screwing up a fine planet.

[jean]

29. Glorious

Thanks for this exquisite shot! I love how exotic this planet looks with two rings and their non-horizontal position.

I wonder what makes the outermost ring wider on the lower side...

[windansea]

33. maybe just the light of the sun

you're welcome!

[Terwilliger]

31. I hope this is the point where the Obelisk appears

we could use some real aliens about now

[Terwilliger]

32. Explanation of rings

Millenia ago, Uranus was a happening spot and thriving society. The Uranans even went to their own version of the Moon, later in their history. At nearly this point, greedy resource mongers flew to that Moon and started ravaging the planetoid. Soon, an ecological disaster of EPIC proportions occurred which destroyed the Uranan biosphere and pulverized the hapless Moon, causing its remnants to disperse into orbit around the now defunct planet.

[leftofthedial]

34. that kind of picture makes me glad they plan to kill it

that is nowhere near as scientifically important as the Mars Spirit press conference rock concert thingies to explain how the gizmo won't wake up.

Yeah. Kill Hubble. Spend a zillion on manned programs that will never get off the ground. Meanwhile, the 30 kids in my daughters class are sharing 12 out-of-date Math textbooks.

Gawd bless Murka.

[windansea]

36. all is not lost

Spirit Condition Upgraded as Twin Rover Nears Mars
Hours before NASA's Opportunity rover will reach Mars, engineers have found a way to communicate reliably with its twin, Spirit, and to get Spirit's computer out of a cycle of rebooting many times a day. Spirit's landing site at Gusev Crater and Opportunity's landing site at Meridiani Planum can be seen in the image of Mars above. (Jan. 24, 4 pm PST)
+ View release (Jan. 24)
+ Flash feature: Learn more about rover landing sites
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html

[windansea]

37. panorama

[daleo]

40. I suspect we will see lots of Hubble images in the near future

I think NASA wants to remind the population what they will be missing if *'s pretend Mars plan goes ahead.

BTW, Uranus (or 'the seventh planet' for those who are squeamish about the name) is quite easy to find with a pair of good binoculars if you are far enough north. It is at about the 4:00 o'clock position down from Venus, maybe about 10 degrees. Venus is the extremely bright object in the s.w. sky just after sunset right now. Uranus is a sort of greenish dot.

[windansea]

43. thanks

will try to spot it tonight with my trusty monocular

[0rganism]

41. Swan Song

Hubble Telescope, it sure was nice looking at the universe through your eye. Unfortunately, our idiot boss says we have to let you turn into space junk so we can have a prison camp on the moon.

[windansea]

45. try JPL's solar system experience

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/solar-system-experience/index.html