Hubble Telescope’s long-term monitoring shows that Uranus has become paler than ever | TechNews Technology New Report

Unlike Earth’s daily changing weather, the atmospheric conditions of planets in the outer solar system are quite stable, and the appearance seems to be the same as a day for decades. However, this is not the case. When scientists compared the photos taken by the Hubble Telescope before and after the years of Uranus, they found that the northern pole of Uranus became paler year by year.

Unlike the earth that is close to “standing” when it revolves around the sun, Uranus’s weird rotation axis and the ecliptic plane have an inclination of up to 98 degrees, and it looks like it is “lying” on the ecliptic plane orbiting the sun. It has recently been theorized that Uranus may have once had a giant satellite, but the latter left, causing Uranus to be pulled down as the celestial body moved away.

The consequence of the tilt is that the hemisphere of Uranus will not receive sunlight for 42 years. When the Voyager 2 probe passed Uranus in the 1980s, the South Pole was almost pointing directly at the sun.

In 2007, the Hubble Space Telescope took pictures of the ring system from the side of Uranus; in 2014, the Hubble Telescope took a few more photos of Uranus, and found that the ring system began to expand after 7 years, and at this time the sun was directly on the equator of Uranus, and many fields Small methane ice crystal cloud storms appeared in the mid-northern latitudes, and some faint cloud bands also appeared.

Over time, we can see interesting atmospheric activity on Uranus. In the photo of 2022, it can be seen that the rotation axis of Uranus is seriously out of balance, causing the north pole to turn to the sun, and the size and brightness of the north pole crown become brighter year after year, showing a thickened light, which looks like the haze over the city, and the edge is still A few small storms are visible.

Long-term tracking shows that the appearance of Uranus is not static. It is expected that by 2028, the polar ice cap of Uranus will turn to the Earth, and the ring system will appear on the front, bringing Hubble and other telescopes an excellent opportunity to better image the structure of Uranus.

(First image source: NASA)