Two more moons found orbiting Uranus

Red, Gray, and Blue: Near Infrared Spectrophotometryof Faint Moons of Uranus and Neptune

Using the CoCo Cold Coronagraph at NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea, we observed the uranian satellites Miranda, Puck, Portia, and Rosalind and the neptunian satellite Proteus in the near infrared (JHK) to determine the albedos of those faint satellites. In V-J, all of Puck, Portia, Rosalind, and Proteus are very blue, similar to the colors of many icy satellites and of water ice...

Two Earth - sized planets orbiting

Why Are Dense Planetary Rings Only Found between 8 and 20au?

The recent discovery of dense rings around the Centaur Chariklo (and possibly Chiron) reveals that complete dense planetary rings are not only found around Saturn and Uranus, but also around small bodies orbiting in the vicinity of those giant planets. This report examines whether or not there could be a physical process that would make rings more likely to form or persist in this particular pa...

Florigen: One Found, More to Follow?

Florigen(s) are molecules that are synthesized in response to appropriate photoperiods and transmitted from leaves to shoot apices to promote floral initiation. It has been recently discovered in Arabidopsis that mRNA of the FT gene acts as a florigen. In Arabidopsis, cryptochromes and phytochromes mediate longday promotion of CO protein expression, which activates FT mRNA expression in leaves....

The Atmosphere of Uranus

Cur r en t knowledge of t he a t m o s p h e r e of U r a n u s is rev iewed a n d specific ob jec t ives are sugges ted for sa te l l i te miss ions to U r a n u s . The a n o m a l o u s compos i t ion of U r a n u s m a k e s d e t e r m i n a t i o n s of i ts a t m o s p h e r i c compos i t i on pa r t i cu l a r ly va luab le for t e s t i n g theor ies of solar s y s t e m evolu t ion ....