What? Is a Uranus sidereal day the same length as its year?
Space Images
- Thread starter inertia
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inertia
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Yes, and it's atmospheric rotation period is about 16 hours, but its equator is nearly perpendicular (~98 deg) to the plane of its orbit. [ It also exhibits retrograde rotation (Venus comes to mind here)].
It's the 84 year orbit causes its poles to alternate toward or away from the sun's radiance and that in-turn cause its highly exaggerated seasonal changes. Uranus has no internal heat source either.
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inertia
Super Member
A 3D map of the Milky Way Galaxy, shown below was constructed based on physical inferences from distance and location measurements using thousands of Cepheid variable stars.
Image credit: Dorota M. Skowron, Jan Skowron, Przemek Mróz, et al., SCIENCE
2 Aug 2019 Vol 365, Issue 6452, pp. 478-482
It isn't flat, it is a barred spiral galaxy, it has a twisted S-shaped structure, and it "shows the structure of our Galaxy’s young stellar population".
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Image credit: Dorota M. Skowron, Jan Skowron, Przemek Mróz, et al., SCIENCE
2 Aug 2019 Vol 365, Issue 6452, pp. 478-482
It isn't flat, it is a barred spiral galaxy, it has a twisted S-shaped structure, and it "shows the structure of our Galaxy’s young stellar population".
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inertia
Super Member
Mars
Mars' vast canyon system called Valles Marineris is situated along it's equator, spanning about 1,890 miles along its length with depths reaching about 4.96 miles from its highest edges. Our Grand Canyon is a fraction of this ranging about 504 miles in length and just over a mile in depth.
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Mars' vast canyon system called Valles Marineris is situated along it's equator, spanning about 1,890 miles along its length with depths reaching about 4.96 miles from its highest edges. Our Grand Canyon is a fraction of this ranging about 504 miles in length and just over a mile in depth.
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inertia
Super Member
Saturn's rings are fading
Credit: Artist's impression: NASA/Cassini/James O'Donoghue - ring density after 100 million years
The planet's innermost rings are slowly disappearing as its mostly ice water rings continuously fall into its upper atmosphere. The gravitational action is occurring at such a rapid rate it is estimated that the mass of an olympic pool of water falls into its atmosphere daily. Notwithstanding, the actual rate is still an open question.
Based on Cassini's instruments as the Cassini spacecraft was about to impact Saturn:
"...between 880 pounds (400 kg) and 6,000 pounds (2,800 kg) of icy rain is flowing onto the planet every second and heating its upper atmosphere."
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References: Space.com, and the Planetary Science Institute
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Credit: Artist's impression: NASA/Cassini/James O'Donoghue - ring density after 100 million years
The planet's innermost rings are slowly disappearing as its mostly ice water rings continuously fall into its upper atmosphere. The gravitational action is occurring at such a rapid rate it is estimated that the mass of an olympic pool of water falls into its atmosphere daily. Notwithstanding, the actual rate is still an open question.
Based on Cassini's instruments as the Cassini spacecraft was about to impact Saturn:
"...between 880 pounds (400 kg) and 6,000 pounds (2,800 kg) of icy rain is flowing onto the planet every second and heating its upper atmosphere."
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References: Space.com, and the Planetary Science Institute
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inertia
Super Member
Saturn's Atmospheric Hexagon
Image credit and copyright: NASA, ESA, JPL, SSI, Cassini Imaging Team
This unique geometric hexagon cloud formation was discovered on one of the Voyager flybys in the '80's and later captured by the Cassini spacecraft in 2012 using an infrared false color image of Saturn's north pole.
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Reference: APOD
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Image credit and copyright: NASA, ESA, JPL, SSI, Cassini Imaging Team
This unique geometric hexagon cloud formation was discovered on one of the Voyager flybys in the '80's and later captured by the Cassini spacecraft in 2012 using an infrared false color image of Saturn's north pole.
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Reference: APOD
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inertia
Super Member
Where are we within our galaxy - the Milky Way?
The history of celestial cartography:
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inertia
Super Member
When stars collide -
"Artist's illustration of a gamma-ray burst, the most powerful type of explosion in the universe. (Image credit: International
Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Garlick/M. Zamani)"
"There are two types of GRBs: short ones, which last for two seconds or less, and the long variety, which can go on for multiple minutes. Astronomers think short GRBs generally result from mergers between neutron stars, whereas long ones are usually spawned when stars at least 10 times more massive than the sun."
The event illustrated above was a long GRB.
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Reference: Space.com
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"Artist's illustration of a gamma-ray burst, the most powerful type of explosion in the universe. (Image credit: International
Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Garlick/M. Zamani)"
"There are two types of GRBs: short ones, which last for two seconds or less, and the long variety, which can go on for multiple minutes. Astronomers think short GRBs generally result from mergers between neutron stars, whereas long ones are usually spawned when stars at least 10 times more massive than the sun."
The event illustrated above was a long GRB.
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Reference: Space.com
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inertia
Super Member
Here is a wonderful example of a Type 1a supernova. This one is SN 1994D and the explosion was a result a white dwarf's end. The image shown below is located on the periphery of a lenticular galaxy named NGC 4526.
Type 1a Supernovae help in determining astronomical distances.
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Type 1a Supernovae help in determining astronomical distances.
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inertia
Super Member
The most distant star detected by the WEBB space telescope to date.
Image credit: ESA, NASA, WEBB space telescope
The left image shows the extent of the field-of-view and the image on the right shows a gravitationally lensed cluster just beyond the diffraction spike at about five o'clock. So far, the red star named Earendel is the most distant star ever detected by any telescope - ever.
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Image credit: ESA, NASA, WEBB space telescope
The left image shows the extent of the field-of-view and the image on the right shows a gravitationally lensed cluster just beyond the diffraction spike at about five o'clock. So far, the red star named Earendel is the most distant star ever detected by any telescope - ever.
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inertia
Super Member
Observations show that Neptune’s clouds fluctuate with the Sun’s 11 year magnetic field cycle.
Image Credit: W M Keck Observatory
“Our findings support the theory that the Sun’s UV rays, when strong enough, may be triggering a photochemical reaction that produces Neptune’s clouds.”
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Reference (much more detail) : W M Keck Observatory
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Image Credit: W M Keck Observatory
“Our findings support the theory that the Sun’s UV rays, when strong enough, may be triggering a photochemical reaction that produces Neptune’s clouds.”
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Reference (much more detail) : W M Keck Observatory
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inertia
Super Member
Now, about those eating habits of black holes, ...
According to the physics-based simulation, there exists an inner accretion disk filled with material that is ripped apart and devoured first - within months.
"This leads to the formation of low-angular momentum "streamers" that rain down onto the inner subdisk, shocking it. The addition of low-angular momentum gas to the inner subdisk causes it to rapidly accrete, even when it is transiently aligned with the BH (Black Hole) spin and thus unwarped." - Nicholas Kaaz, Matthew T. P. Liska, and Jonatan Jacquemin-Ide, et. Al., "Nozzle Shocks, Disk Tearing, and Streamers Drive Rapid Accretion in 3D GRMHD Simulations of Warped Thin Disks", p. 72, Vol. 955., The Astrophysical Journal Sept. 20th, 2023
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Simulation image credit: Tech Explorist
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According to the physics-based simulation, there exists an inner accretion disk filled with material that is ripped apart and devoured first - within months.
"This leads to the formation of low-angular momentum "streamers" that rain down onto the inner subdisk, shocking it. The addition of low-angular momentum gas to the inner subdisk causes it to rapidly accrete, even when it is transiently aligned with the BH (Black Hole) spin and thus unwarped." - Nicholas Kaaz, Matthew T. P. Liska, and Jonatan Jacquemin-Ide, et. Al., "Nozzle Shocks, Disk Tearing, and Streamers Drive Rapid Accretion in 3D GRMHD Simulations of Warped Thin Disks", p. 72, Vol. 955., The Astrophysical Journal Sept. 20th, 2023
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Simulation image credit: Tech Explorist
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