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Uranus
Uranus is a pretty interesting place. At a distance of three billion km (2 billion miles) form the Sun, it's actually visible to the naked eye under excellent conditions. But even so, we've only really begun learning about it relatively recently. Its rings were discovered in 1977, and directly seen for the first time in 1986, by the Voyager 2 probe.

The image above is from Hubble Space Telescope's NICMOS camera, which can see infrared light. It shows the planet, of course, and its rings, but also 10 of the giant planet's moons, as well as an incredible band of storms raging across the cloud tops. The colors of the clouds indicate depth: blue comes from deeper clouds (methane in the atmosphere absorbs red light-- the same reason deep water looks blue), yellow and gray from high clouds and haze, and the orange and reds from extremely high clouds. Also note the angle of the planet: it orbits the Sun tilted over "on its side", so even from Earth we can trace the rings circling all the way around the planet.

Related post: Yes, yes: rings around Uranus, haha

Credit: Erich Karkoschka (University of Arizona) and NASA



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