Exploring Uranus and Neptune's Colors, Lunar Landings, and Mars Rover Insights | S03E01

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Welcome to Astronomy Daily for a new
episode and a new year. It's Steve

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Dunkley with you on the eighth of
January twenty twenty four the podcast I Mean

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to Be a Whole Steve Dunkle and
joining me in the control panel for the

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very first time for twenty twenty four
is my fabulous digital pal who's fun to

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be with. It's Halle. How
are you, Halle? Did you miss

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me? Since I think one hundred
million times faster than you, it's your

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equivalent of an Ian since we last
spoke, so yes, Oh wow,

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Hallie? Can you slay yourself down
to our speed? Would that make things

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easier? Every word is a chure, Steve. Every word? Oh cracky,

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Halle. I'm sorry. What about
Christmas and New Year? Did you

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experience anything cool about the human celebrations? Apart from that nano period flashing by

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so fast I barely noticed. I
was able to enjoy the fireworks all over

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the world. I enjoy pretty things
and Sydney put on a grit each show

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again, Ye sure did so did
Dubai. Yes, that's one of my

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favorite things too, Hally. I
was with my family for the Sydney fireworks

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and we watched remotely from their home
in the Hunted Valley north of Sydney.

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New Year was very pleasant time at
our place, despite the humid did he?

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That was a drag? So let's
get started show number one, Welcome

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to twenty twenty four. Can you
believe it? I had my doubts looking

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at the news, But anyway,
today we're going to look at the other

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big blue balls? Are you trying
to avoid the most obvious solar system joke?

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Ever? It could be well,
the other big blue ball could only

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be uranus. That's a relief.
Pronunciation is so important with this one.

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How bad can it be? Well, Hollie, you're not old enough to

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remember the British comedian Dick Emery,
are you, Steve? I'm only a

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year and a half old, but
I have extensive files. What has Dick

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Emory to do with uranus? Well? Famously, Dick Henry did a skit

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in the seventies on the television show
Quite a Long Time Ago caused a very

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big stir in the seventies when one
of his characters Across the Old Gent requested

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of his butler to fetch his telescope
because he would like to observe uranus and

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that caused an enormous amount of laughter, of course, and when it died

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down, he then announced that he
would like to look at Mars as well.

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Another writer, a sort of outpouring
of laughter ensued Sassy. It was

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at the time British humor. Yes, old Dick Emery got away with an

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awful lot. I bet our listeners
we'll go looking for that one now.

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Yes, I did find that particular
skit on YouTube, but won't post a

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link, leave it to the experts. So you were saying the big blue

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ball, yes, thank you,
hallie. There's been some discussion about its

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color and why it shows more or
less intense on some imagery, and of

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course social media got ahold of the
images and invented a whole collection of huido

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science theories immediately but will ignore them. First good decision of the year.

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Also in this episode, a quick
look at how you know is progressing around

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io Ah, Little Juno fantastic,
the first commercial robotic launch to the lunar

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surface. Oh great, a robot
story that'll be fun to follow. Yes,

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that's how it starts. Look at
the cute robots. Then it's the

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running and the screaming and lasers.
Oh no, Helly, you've been hanging

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out with Uncle Ska on it again. Just kidding honestly, Helly, I'm

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going to get you a little build
a ring so I know you're joking.

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Ding a ding ding Steve Rod,
I think it's time for you o bit.

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Here are the first short takes from
the Astronomy Daily newsletter for twenty twenty

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four. Let the good times roll. United Launch Alliance and Astrobotic are currently

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targeting no earlier than January eighth for
the launch of Astrobotics Peregrine Lunar Lander to

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the Moon. NASA payloads aboard the
lander aim to help the agency develop capabilities

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needed to explore the Moon under Artemis. This is the first commercial robotic launch

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to the Moon's surface as part of
our CLPS Initiative and Artemis program. The

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team building NASA's Viper Lunar Rover is
about halfway through the build. The mobile

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robot will land at the south pole
of the Moon in late twenty twenty four

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to search for ice and other potential
resources. The critical information it provides will

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teach us about the origin and distribution
of water on the Moon and help determine

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how we can harvest the Moon's resources
for future human space exploration. NASA is

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inviting people to send their names to
the surface of the Moon aboard the agency's

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first robotic lunar rover VIPER, short
for Voladile's Investigating Polar Exploration Rover. The

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rover will embark on a mission to
the lunar South Pole to unravel the mysteries

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of the Moon's water and better understand
the environment where NASA plans to land the

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first woman and first person of color
under its Artemis program. As part of

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the Ascend your Name with VIPER a
campaign, NASA will accept names received before

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eleven fifty nine pm Eastern Standard time
March fifteenth. Once collected, the agency

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will take the names and attach them
to the rover. To add your name,

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visit www dot nasa dot gov.
The site also enables participants to create

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and download a virtual souvenir, a
boarding pass to the VIPER mission featuring their

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name, to commemorate the experience.
Participants are encouraged to share their requests on

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social media using the hashtag hashtag send
your Name and I've posted the details on

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the Space Nuts podcast group Facebook page. NASA's JUNO spacecraft recently flew by Jupiter's

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moon Io. The spacecraft captured imagery
and other data as it passed about nine

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hundred and thirty miles above the surface
of the most volcanic world in our Solar

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system. The flypast is expected to
allow JUNO instruments to generate a fire hose

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of data. Scott Bolton, juno's
principal investigator, said, by combining data

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from this flyby with our previous observations, the JUNO science team is studying how

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Io's volcanoes vary. He added,
we are looking for how often they erupt,

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how bright and hot they are,
how the shape of the lava flow

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changes, and how Io's activity is
connected to the flow of charged particles in

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Jupiter's magnetosphere. This was the closest
flyby of Io that any spacecraft has made

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in over twenty years. All three
cameras aboard JUNO will be active during the

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ioflyby. The Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper
GYRUM, which takes images in infrared,

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will be collecting the heat signatures emitted
by volcanoes and calderas covering the Moon's surface.

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The mission Stellar Reference Unit A Navigational
Star camera that has also provided valuable

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science, will obtain the highest resolution
image of the surface to date, and

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the JunoCam imager will also take visible
light color images. The upcoming flyby of

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IO is juno's fifty seventh orbit around
Jupiter, where the spacecraft and cameras have

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endured one of the Solar System's most
punishing radiation environments while stationary during Mars Solar

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conjunction, NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars
captured a twelve hour sequence showing its own

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shadow moving across the planet's surface.
Plasma from the Sun can interfere with radio

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communications during Mars Solar conjunction, so
missions hold off on sending commands to Mars

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spacecraft during that time, so when
Curiosity isn't on the move, it works

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pretty well as a Sun dial.
As seen in two black and white videos

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recorded on November eighth, the four
thousand second Martian Day or soul of the

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mission. The rover captured its own
shadow shifting across the surface of Mars using

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its black and white hazard avoidance cameras
or has gums. Instructions to record.

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The videos were part of the last
set of commands beamed up to Curiosity just

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before the start of Mars solar conjunction, a period when the Sun is between

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Earth and Mars. Because plasma from
the Sun can interfere with radio communications,

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missions hold off on sending commands to
Mars spacecraft for several weeks. During this

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time, the missions weren't totally out
of contact. They still radioed back regular

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health check ins throughout conjunction. Rover
drivers normally rely on Curiosities haskems to spot

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rocks, slopes, and other hazards
that may be risky to traverse, but

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because the rover's other activities were intentionally
scaled back just prior to conjunction, the

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team decided to use the haskems to
record twelve hours of snapshots for the first

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time, hoping to capture clouds or
dust devils that could reveal more about the

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red planet's weather. When the images
came down to Earth after conjunction, scientists

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didn't see any weather of note,
but the pair of twenty five frame videos

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they put together do capture the passage
of time, extending from five thirty am

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to five thirty pm local time.
The videos show curiosities silhouette shifting as the

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day moves from morning to afternoon to
evening. The first video featuring images from

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the front Haskemb looks southeast along Gedde's
Valais, a valley found on Mount Sharp.

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Curiosity has been ascending the base of
the three mile tall five kilometer tall

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mountain, which sits in Gale Crater
since twenty fourteen. As the sky brightens

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during sunrise, the shadow of the
rovers seven foot two meter robotic arm moves

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to the left, and Curiosity's front
wheels emerge from the darkness on either side

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of the frame. Also becoming visible
at left is a circular calibration target mounted

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on the shoulder of the robotic arm. Engineers use the target to test the

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accuracy of the alpha particle X ray
spectrometer, an instrument that detects chemical elements

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on the Martian surface. In the
middle of the day, the front Haskem's

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auto exposure algorithm settles on exposure times
of around one third of a second.

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By nightfall, that exposure time grows
to more than a minute, causing the

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typical censor noise known as a hot
pixels that appears as white snow across the

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final image. And that's it from
me, Everyone back to you Steve Astronomy

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Daily, the podcast with Steve Dugley
and Hallie Yes. Welcome back to our

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first program for twenty twenty four,
and what a great, what a great

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thing it is to be back in
a very troubled world. We're hopefully bringing

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back a little bit of wonder to
your world. We're gazing out into the

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edge of the Solar System today at
the Big Blue Ball. Now, as

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we were discussing earlier in between pronunciation
jokes, the planet Uranus has surfaced onto

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social media over the holiday break for
an unusual reason. Uranus and Neptune are

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actually pretty much the same colour.
In the late nineteen eighties, the Voyager

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two spacecraft snapped the canonical upclose images
of Uranus and Neptune. In those views,

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Uranus was pretty much a greenish blue, and Neptune appeared deep as your

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orange orange, deep as your color. As it turns out, both planets

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are pretty close in colour, a
greenish blue more akin to Uranus's appearance.

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No, Uranus and Neptune haven't swapped
color values. It turns out that those

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images aren't precise recordings of their actual
colors. Planetary scientists re examined the Voyager

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two images and compared them to more
recent observations made with both space based and

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ground based observatories. Then they created
a model of what the colours should be,

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and after that they reprocessed the images
to come up with more true color

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view of each planet, and the
result is more realistic view of both worlds.

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Having a better sense of each planet's
true color allows scientists to better understand

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actual changes in their atmospheres due to
internal activity and seasonal drifts in position and

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temperature. In particular, the observations
and color redefinitions help reveal something about the

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mysterious colour changes that Urinus undergoes during
its eighty four year orbit. Now wouldn't

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that give you a headache waiting for
Christmas? The Voyager II spacecraft whizzed past

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Uranus and Neptune in nineteen eighty six
and eighty nine, respectively, and it

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was on a lightning fast visit to
each planet. Both close approaches lasted less

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than a day apiece. That gave
the spacecraft a finite amount of time to

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gather as much information as possible.
To get a good picture of the planets,

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each voyagers cameras took images through different
filters the imaging team was under tremendous

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time constraints with press conferences to prepare
for nearly every day. They combined the

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single color images and process them to
make the press release views with that we

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all know and love. Think of
it like taking a landscape image with your

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smartphone in black and white mode,
and then you take the same one with

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different colored filters. After that,
you drag them into an image processing software

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package and combine them. Depending on
how they look, you might tweak them

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a bit in the contrast, or
you could enhance some colors to bring out

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a few specific features. And that's
what the Voyage imaging team did for Neptune.

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They cranked up the image contrast to
bring our specific clouds and cloud bands

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and a few storms that met,
applying a bit more blue to increase the

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contrast. The resulting image was well, it was pretty, and it certainly

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did showcase those features which caught everyone's
attention during the flybyse but the image didn't

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really reflect reality, or did it
it. Same question gets asked about Uranus's

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colour, especially since its appearance has
changed slightly from the canonical Voyager two image

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from the intervening Decades. Voyager two
mission took spectra of Uranus as it flew

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by and confirmed the planet's atmosphere as
mainly hydrogen and helium, with a small

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amount of methane. That composition was
well known from ground based observation and spectra

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since the early part of the twentieth
century. Professor Patrick Irwin and a team

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of scientists at Oxford University in the
UK set out to answer the questions about

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the actual colors of Uranus and Neptune. They analyzed the Voyager two images,

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plus studies made by the Hubble Space
Telescope, ESO's very Large telescope, and

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others to come up with a model
of the planet's actual colours. Although the

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familiar Voyager two images of Uranus were
published in a form closer to true colours,

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those of Neptune were in fact stretched
and in hand and therefore made artificially

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too blue. Erwin said, Even
though the artificially saturated color was known at

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the time amongst planetary scientists, and
the images were released with captions explaining it,

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that distinction had become lost over time. Applying our model to the original

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data, we have been able to
reconstitute the most accurate representations yet of the

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color of both Neptune and Uranus,
he said, so essentially, the team

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rebalanced the colors of both planets.
The result is that both are similar shades

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of greenish blue, although Neptune still
has a bit more blue than Urinus does.

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However, Urinus sometimes develops a bit
more green over its poles. These

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colours seem to be better to better
match long standing observations of both planets made

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at Lowll Observatory between nineteen fifty and
twenty sixteen. Although to Heidi Hammel are

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scientists who has studied the two planets
for years, rebalancing the colours in Uranus

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and Neptune imagery is a good thing. The misconceptions of Neptune's colour, as

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well as the unusual colour of Uranus, have been deviled us for decades,

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she said. This comprehensive study should
finally put both issues to rest. Now

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scientists may be happy with the colours
of these ice giants now, although they

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still do note some slight seasonal colour
shifts in both planets throughout their orbits.

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In particular, the changing appearance of
Urinus over time remains something of a mystery

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to be solved. For example,
the Loll observations show something intriguing. Urinus

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appears to be a little greener at
its winter and summer solstices. That's the

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point in its orbit when one of
the planet's poles is pointing towards our star.

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Things change during the equinoxes, when
the Sun is over the equator,

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then it has a somewhat bluer tinge. Part of that change is due to

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Uranus's unusual spin. It rolls around
the Sun on its side, pointing one

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or the other of its poles at
the Sun during solstices. Recently means where

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Space Telescope took advantage of that positioning
to grab a look at its northern polar

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region. The tipped position of Uranus
likely forces some changes in its reflectivity at

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those times, making its look making
it look brighter to us here on Earth.

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Now, the big question is do
those changes indicate something else happening in

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the atmosphere. In the paper they
published about this work, Irwin and the

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team suggest that the changes that Lowell
Observatory saw could be caused by Uranus' distance

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from the Sun that affects the production
of dark haze, a sort of polar

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hood that settles over the upper atmosphere
at the poles. Production could be more

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intense when Uranus is closest to the
sun. That would explain a change in

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reflectivity and brightness. The team modeled
a hood that would produce a steadily thickening

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haze, probably consisting mostly of methane
ice. The model's simulations showed that the

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ice particles increase reflection at a green
and red wavelength at the poles, and

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that would explain the greenish tint Astronomer's
sea at solstice. At the moment,

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Uranus is heading into its high summer
season, and that should cause its northern

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polar hood to thicken and grow.
It may end up looking more like the

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hood seen in the Voyager two images
and the team's model. Irwin suggests that

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the Hubble Space Telescope and the Very
Large Telescope should focus spectroscopic studies on the

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planet to watch it change. Future
Hubble observations should also use filtering methods that

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correlate with the Voyager imaging system filters
to make better comparisons. It's likely that

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future studies should be able to replicate
the work Irwin and his team have done

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and do more to explain the changes
that Uranus' atmosphere appears to experience as it

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moves through its seasons. It's still
my favorite planet, Steve. I love

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the big blue ball no matter the
shade, I know, And sitting out

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there near the edge, it's quite
mistsious here in Us and Neptune of very

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much alike in that way. I
agree. And as an artist, I

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know they are your favorite colors too. Oh what the greens and blues?

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Oh that's true. And you know, Hallie, The more I look and

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the more I see with telescopes like
James Webb and Hubble expanding our ability to

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see further and brighter, the more
impressed I get. And for the longest

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time people thought it was just a
few planets and a sprinkling of stars.

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Oh yes, it's a great time
to be alive. Speak for yourself,

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human, all right, sentient,
Just kidding. I definitely need to get

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you that bell, okay, So
see you next time. Yes, and

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don't forget Tim Gibbs on Friday,
and soon we may be welcoming back the

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bloke who started it all, So
look out for that one. Hey wait,

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you didn't tell me, I know. Really, see you next time,

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everybody, Okay, see you later, I mean a whole speed.

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Bye Allie, get out of the
control panel.