First Image of the Dark Side of the Rings of Uranus

Details First Image of the Dark Side of the Rings of Uranus First Image of the Dark Side of the Rings of Uranus

Dec 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007aas...211.5608h&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #211, #56.08; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.829

Physics

Optics

Scientific paper

The rings of Uranus are oriented edge-on to Earth in 2007 for the first time since their 1977 discovery. The event provided a rare opportunity to observe their dark (unlit) side, where dense rings darkened to near invisibility, but faint rings became much brighter. We present a ground-based infrared image of the unlit side of the rings that shows that the system has changed dramatically since previous views. A broad cloud of faint material permeates the system but is not correlated with the well-known narrow rings or with the embedded dust belts imaged by the Voyager spacecraft. Although some differences can be explained by the unusual viewing angle, we conclude that the dust distribution within the system has changed substantially since the 1986 Voyager encounter and that it occurs on much larger scales than has been seen in other planetary systems. This work was funded by NSF and the Technology Center for Adaptive Optics, managed by UCSC under cooperative agreement no. AST-9876783. The Keck Observatory is operated as a scientific partnership among Caltech, UC, and NASA. Further support was provided by NASA grants NNX06AD12G and NNG06GI25G (HBH), NNX07AK70G (IdP), and NNX06AB98G (MRS).

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