A day at Uranus just got 28 seconds longer
This image provided by ESA/Hubble shows Uranus' aurorae taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope on Oct. 10, 2022. Credit: AP
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A day at Uranus just got a little longer.
Scientists reported Monday that observations by the Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed it takes Uranus 17 hours, 14 minutes and 52 seconds to complete a full rotation. That’s 28 seconds longer than estimates by NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft in the 1980s.
A French-led team studied a decade’s worth of aurora observations at the ice giant to track its magnetic poles. That long-term tracking provided a more precise rotation period for Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun. From that distance, it takes about 84 Earth years for Uranus to orbit the sun.
“The continuous observations from Hubble were crucial,” lead author Laurent Lamy of the Paris Observatory said in a statement.
Lamy and his international team said this new approach can help pinpoint the rotation of any world with auroras and a magnetosphere.
Published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the findings come a few weeks before the 35th anniversary of Hubble's launch. NASA's space shuttle Discovery delivered the space telescope to orbit on April 24, 1990.
'Success is zero deaths on the roadway' Newsday reporters spent this year examining the risks on Long Island's roads, where traffic crashes over a decade killed more than 2,100 people and seriously injured more than 16,000. This documentary is a result of that newsroom-wide effort.
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