Blue Ring Around Uranus 269
ZedNaught writes "The BBC is reporting that 'astronomers have discovered that the planet Uranus has a blue ring - only the second found in the Solar System. Like the blue ring of Saturn, it probably owes its existence to an accompanying small moon.' According to the April issue of Science, the blue ring is one of two new outer rings recently discovered around Uranus using the infrared Keck adaptive optics system. The rings are blue and red like Saturn's E and G rings. The blue ring around Saturn hosts the moon Enceladus while the Uranus ring contains the moon Mab."
21 comments later.... (Score:5, Informative)
In any case, I found it odd that when MSNBC [msn.com] reported on this a few days ago they called the ring "rare". Considering that we have a whole 8-10 planets to base this on (depending on who's definition you use of "planet") I would consider the 20-25% of "blue ring" planets to be fairly common. It's not like this is an albino Kodiak or some other anomaly.
Aside from that have a blast mocking the planet for it's unfortunate name. What were they thinking? It's like naming a boy Sue or some such nonsense.
Re:man... (Score:4, Informative)
Or just pray at the alter of wikipedia [wikipedia.org]. Enlightenment WILL come.
Eventualy
Re:Difference between moon an asteroid (Score:5, Informative)
Well thats exactly what it is, however the moons history orbiting earth has left it with a different composition from asteroids. The moon has hardly any water, while many asteroids are now known to have a lot of water.
So the distinction is still important. The real gray area is with the small outer moons of Jupiter which are called moons but are certainly captured asteroids.
Re:Let's face it, we all sniggered (Score:2, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium#Spelling [wikipedia.org]
Re:man... (Score:2, Informative)
Mehhhh
Re:Difference between moon an asteroid (Score:4, Informative)
a)orbiting the sun, or
b)orbiting an object that is orbiting the sun.
Asteroids orbiting the sun are called centaurs, and there are millions of them. Some asteroids are in orbit of planets, such as the moons of Mars. Saturn's moon Phoebe is almost certainly a captured asteroid, as are Jupiter's outer moons, and inner ones such as Amalthea.
In general, the easiest difference between an asteroid and a 'small moon' is that a small moon has been pulled by its own gravity into a spherical shape.
That's not a hard and fast definition though. Saturn's moon Hyperion is in an irregular shape (one side is basically sheared off) but there are smaller moons that have the spherical shape.
Don't get too hung up on names. Our moon was called that long before the seventeenth century, which was the first time anything was found orbiting a body other than the sun.
Re:Let's face it, we all sniggered (Score:5, Informative)
In fairness, the Greek was pronounced something closer to "oorenos" (with a long "o" at the end). The problem comes with putting a "y" before the "ou" vowel; that's an artifact of Latin.
Re:Let's face it, we all sniggered (Score:4, Informative)
Exactly.
Uranus is the Latinized form of Ouranos, Greek name of the sky. [wikipedia.org] The 'yu' pronunciation is an example of an iotated vowel [wikipedia.org]. The derivation from the Greek shows that the 'yu' sound is an artifact. I am not aware if it came in with the Ancient Roman pronunciation of the latinised version or whether it has come in only recently with the English pronunciation of the latinised spelling. I suspect the latter. Some English speakers seem to like to iotate 'u' sounds, an example being 'nyuclear'.
Most dictionaries give the un-iotated version as a possible pronunciation and I certainly find it a less compromising pronunciation to use.
NASA tried to change the name (Score:5, Informative)