No Joke: The Ring Around Uranus is Blue
U.C. Berkeley astronomy professor Imke de Pater tells Red Orbit:
The newly discovered outer ring of Uranus is bright blue, for the same reason the Earth’s sky is blue — it is made up of tiny particles, astronomers said on Thursday.
It is "strikingly similar" to Saturn’s outer ring, which astronomers last month confirmed was probably generated by one of the planet’s moons, Enceladus.
Like Saturn’s ring, the Uranus ring also has a small moon in it, called Mab. But Mab is too small and too cold to be spewing a geyser of ice that contributes to the ring as Enceladus is now believed to be doing.
"The outer ring of Saturn is blue and has Enceladus right smack at its brightest spot, and Uranus is strikingly similar, with its blue ring right on top of Mab’s orbit," said Imke de Pater, a professor of astronomy at the University of California Berkeley, who helped lead the study.
"I think there is no chance that the blue ring is caused by geyser activity," added de Pater, whose report is published in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.
Originally named after King George III of England, Uranus is the 4th largest planet by mass. Found some animation and images of interest, courtesy of the SETI Institute.
