First go at Uranus

[matt]

Ah ha!!!!

You might have nailed it Lester. Good work.

Let Asi and Ken know

[Lester]

Yep. Uranus has its poles tilted at 98 degrees, with one pole continually facing the sun.

[John K]

Thanks for all the comments guys, interesting stuff.

I was sure very surprised to see any kind of detail on the disk, so it is possibly artifacts, as I too do not believe that Uranus shows any surface detail.

I did as John suggested and looked at the green channel and there is something there, artifact, belts etc.

Interestingly enough it appears that the poles of Uranus are not pointing at the sun at the moment and we have a nice equatorial plane view. I used the JPL simulator to find that out. See here:

http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/

or for Uranus today:

http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/ws...rbs=1&showsc=1

[slice of heaven]

Originally Posted by matt

Not even the Keck... captured the bands, eh?

http://www2.keck.hawaii.edu/news/science/uranus/

[matt]

interesting....

I thought you meant the detail it caught was "the rings and moons" only.

Some surface detail there also. I'd imagine you'd need something like the Keck though to see those details. I could be wrong but I guess it's beyond the capabilities of the average backyard scope?

[Lester]

Well John,

at least you got the colour correct.

[slice of heaven]

Originally Posted by matt

I guess it's beyond the capabilities of the average backyard scope?

At the rate the planet imagers on this site are moving, probably not till next week.

I dug through my old computer last night for a couple of links I saved.
The first one I think is a fairly honest shot from 4 years ago with the moons.

http://www.kk-system.co.jp/Alpo/kk02/u020719z.htm

This second one is from a couple of years ago, it created a bit of discussion on another site on the processing of artifacts in/out of the final image
In steps 2 and 3 you can see banding before the noise is removed.
http://www.geocities.com/rolo0235/Pl...ndoChavez.html

Scroll to the bottom of the last link and there's an image of Neptune as well.

[ving (David)]

gee slice, looks like we have a ways to go then