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Uranus

NASA Asked People to Name its New Uranus Probe. It Went As Well As You’d Expect

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Uranus - Deposit Photos

NASA asked for suggestions for the name of its new Uranus probe, and naturally, chaos ensued. The Uranus Orbiter and Probe is a project that NASA hopes to launch in 2030. It’s a good idea; asking the public to give that probe a name, however, is not. The mission plans to spend, as the title suggests, several years orbiting the seventh planet from the Sun. It would potentially send a probe down through its atmosphere to the surface. Full Story from Pink News

Mysterious X-Rays Are Flaring Out of Uranus

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Uranus - Pixabay

Subtitled: Uranus is always full of surprises. Cue the jokes. :) For the first time, astronomers have detected mysterious X-rays flaring out of Uranus. How is this happening? According to NASA scientists, Uranus is so massive that it could just be scattering X-rays given off by the sun more than a billion miles away. Or, perhaps the fine rings of dust surrounding Uranus are generating their own radiation through some unknown process. A closer study of Uranus is required to know for sure. Uranus is cold, windy and made almost entirely of ice and gas. Even though it’s enormous (with … Read more

SPACE: Uranus is Weird

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Uranus

Uranus is a weirdo — the icy giant rotates while lying on its side and it’s been called a rear end in even the highest echelons of academia (right?). Now, astronomers have found it has an oddball ring system, too. In new images of the rings around Uranus (the seventh planet from the sun has 13 known rings), researchers have been able to decipher not only the temperature, but also the bits that create the rings. The scientists found that the densest, brightest ring — called the epsilon ring — is pretty darn cold (by human standards): 77 Kelvin, which … Read more

SPACE: Uranus Smells Like Rotten Eggs. Really.

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Uranus - NASA

Uranus smells like rotten eggs, and that is not a joke. A new study finds that the seventh planet from the sun has an upper atmosphere flush with hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide is a gas best known for its repulsive smell; the gas emanates from sewers and volcanoes on Earth, explaining why some hot springs, which are fed by geothermally heated water, smell like breakfast gone bad. Astronomers have now discovered that the gas is common in the cloud tops of Uranus. That hydrogen sulfide composition is different than what is found in the upper atmospheres of Uranus’ fellow giant … Read more