Uranus close-up by JWST

(Planetary Space Images) – This image of Uranus captured by the James Webb Space Telescope‘s NIRCam offers a closer examination of the seasonal north polar cloud cap. It unveils the faint inner and outer rings, including the elusive Zeta ring—the thinly spread and subtle ring closest to the planet, and a view of the planet’s 27 known moons, even showcasing some small moons within the rings. The image also features several vibrant storms near and below the southern border of the polar cap. …

planetary uranus-close-up

Two Pale Blue Dots

(Planetary) – Carl Sagan coined the term “Pale Blue Dot” to describe Earth as seen from a great distance in space; in Zong Wang’s image of this week’s total lunar eclipse, the pale blue dot visible to the lower left of the Moon (above a smaller dot) is distant Uranus. …

planetary two-pale-blue-dots

Journey to the Mystery Planet

(Guardian Science) – Robin McKie:

The last time a probe visited the distant ice giant Uranus was in 1986, yet learning more about this cold world could tell us a lot about the galaxy. …

theguardian uranus-mission

Neptune’s Discovery

(Starts With A Bang!) – Ethan Siegel:

From the 1600s, Kepler’s and Newton’s Laws described planetary motion precisely. In 1781, Uranus’s discovery gave us a new testing ground. After multiple decades, something was clearly amiss. Uranus initially moved quicker than predicted, then as anticipated, and finally, too slowly. A spectacular possible explanation arose: a massive, additional, outer planet. …

Gravitation, all on its own, can reveal what’s present in the cosmos like nothing else. …

starts-with-a-bang neptunes-discovery

Emily Lakdawalla: Planetary Society Advent Calendar for December 21: Miranda

(The Planetary Society) – Voyager 2’s images of Miranda were the highest-resolution of any of Uranus’ moons, which was fortunate because Miranda turned out to have interesting and bizarre geology. …

http://planetary.org/blog/article/00002271/