Astronomers Examine The Rings Around Uranus

Back in 1977, it was discovered that, just like its gas giant pals Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune, Uranus also had rings of its own. Back then, however, the origin and the composition of Uranus's rings were pretty much unknown.

Fortunately, thanks to the efforts of scientists, as well as advances on technology, we might now have a glimpse of what caused Uranus’s rings and what they are made of.

Astronomers at UC Berkeley just took the temperature of the mysterious rings surrounding Uranus for the first time, using data from the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) and the Very Large Telescope (VLT).

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Now, thanks to the new thermal imaging data, the astronomers determined that the rings exist at an icy 77 degrees Kelvin, about -321 Fahrenheit, or roughly the boiling point of liquid nitrogen at standard pressure.

What had the researchers scratching their heads, though, is the composition of Uranus’s rings. Other planets in our Solar System have rings made up of either larger particles or powdery dust, or a mix of both. For instance, Jupiter and Neptune’s rings are largely composed of fine particles.

More details about this one over at Futurism.

(Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ Wikimedia Commons)