If you look closely … you might find …
Uranus, pictured as a blue dot in the upper left of this natural-colored image, represents what the human eye would see from the vantage point of our Cassini spacecraft as it flew by Saturn’s rings. At the time, Cassini was approximately 614,300 miles (988,600 km) from Saturn and 28.3 astronomical units from Uranus. An astronomical unit is the average distance from Earth to the Sun, equal to 93 million miles (150 million km).
Uranus is a pale blue because its visible atmosphere contains methane gas, and few aerosols or clouds. Methane on Uranus – and its sapphire-colored sibling, Neptune – absorbs red wavelengths of incoming sunlight, but allows blue wavelengths to escape back into space, resulting in the predominantly bluish color seen here.
Image description: Several of Saturn’s rings diagonally intersect the image from the right corner. In the lower right a broad ring is visible in tan, framed by a ring lighter in color on its outer...
Tags, Events, and Projects