Ice Giant Archives

This rendering demonstrates what is happening during a stellar occultation and illustrates an example of the light curve data graph recorded by scientists that enables them to gather atmospheric measurements, like temperature and pressure, from Uranus as the amount of starlight changes when the planet eclipses the star. NASA/Langley Research Center Advanced Concepts Laboratory Video

Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Ice Giant, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Press Release, Uranus

Using Stellar Occultation To Study The Atmosphere Of Ice Giant Uranus

by Keith CowingMay 13, 2025

When a planet’s orbit brings it between Earth and a distant star, it’s more than just a cosmic game of hide and seek. It’s an opportunity for NASA to improve […]

This image of Uranus from NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) on the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope shows the planet and its rings in new clarity. The Webb image exquisitely captures Uranus’s seasonal north polar cap, including the bright, white, inner cap and the dark lane in the bottom of the polar cap. Uranus’ dim inner and outer rings are also visible in this image, including the elusive Zeta ring—the extremely faint and diffuse ring closest to the planet. Larger image

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Ice Giant, Status Report, Uranus

Uranus Flagship Science-Driven Tour Design: Community Input Poll

by Keith CowingMay 12, 2025May 12, 2025

The highest priority Planetary Flagship from the Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey is the Uranus Orbiter and Probe.

Schematic illustration of chemical interaction between an hydrogen-dominated atmosphere and a magma ocean in sub-Neptune with an oxidized FeO-containing magma ocean (left panel) and a reduced FeO-free magma ocean. Note that the focus of this study is the chemical interaction in sub-Neptune with a reduced FeO-free magma ocean. -- astro-ph.EP

Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Ice Giant, Lava / magma ocean / Volcanic Worlds, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Monosilane Worlds: Sub-Neptunes with Atmospheres Shaped by Reduced Magma Oceans

by Keith CowingMay 12, 2025May 12, 2025

High-precision infrared spectroscopic measurements now enable detailed characterization of sub-Neptune atmospheres, potentially providing constraints on their interiors. Motivated by this, atmospheric models have been developed to explore chemical interactions between […]

At the left, an enhanced-color image of Neptune from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. At the right, that image is combined with data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The cyan splotches, which represent auroral activity, and white clouds, are data from Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), overlayed on top of the full image of the planet from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3. - STSCI

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Ice Giant, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Neptune, People Of Astrobiology, Press Release, Radiation, Space Weather & Heliophysics

Webb Space Telescope Captures Neptune’s Auroras For First Time

by Keith CowingApril 4, 2025May 12, 2025

For the first time, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured bright auroral activity on Neptune. Auroras occur when energetic particles, often originating from the Sun, become trapped in a […]

Looking at ice-giant planet Uranus over the course of 20 years - STSCI

Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Ice Giant, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Press Release, Uranus, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

20-Year Hubble Study of Uranus Yields New Atmospheric Insights

by Keith CowingApril 2, 2025May 12, 2025

The ice-giant planet Uranus, which travels around the Sun tipped on its side, is a weird and mysterious world. Now, in an unprecedented study spanning two decades, researchers using NASA’s […]

Summary of the haze properties assumed in the simulations. The left panel shows number density and mean radius of the haze distribution that was used as input in the GCM simulations. The middle panel shows the differential optical depth for soot (solid) and tholin (dashed) hazes at 1 µm (representative for the incoming starlight) and 8 µm (representative for the outgoing thermal radiation) for the nominal haze opacity case. The pressure levels where the optical depth reaches 0.01 (circle), 0.1 (star), and 1 (square) are highlighted. For soot at 1 µm, the optical depth reaches 0.01 at a pressure of 6 · 10−7 bar, outside the pressure range shown. The right panel shows the wavelength-averaged single scattering albedo weighted by the stellar flux. For the “maximally reflective” case, the optical depth is identical to the soot case, but the single scattering albedo is fixed to 0.9999. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrochemistry, Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Habitable Zones, Ice Giant, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

The Radiative Effects of Photochemical Hazes on the Atmospheric Circulation and Phase Curves of Sub-Neptunes

by Keith CowingMarch 31, 2025May 12, 2025

Measuring the atmospheric composition of hazy sub-Neptunes like GJ 1214 b through transmission spectroscopy is difficult because of the degeneracy between mean molecular weight and haziness.

Astronomy & Telescopes, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Ice Giant, Status Report

Research On Super-Earths And Mini-Neptunes Suggests More Earth-like Planets May Exist

by Keith CowingMarch 24, 2025May 12, 2025

A new study by Rice University researchers Sho Shibata and Andre Izidoro presents a compelling new model for the formation of super-Earths and mini-Neptunes — planets that are 1 to […]

Phase-resolved reflected light and thermal components of LTT 9779b. a, Reflected light amplitude as a function of the sub-observer longitude – the longitude at the center of the projected planetary disk for a given orbital phase. -- astro-ph.EP

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Gas Giants, Ice Giant, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Highly Reflective White Clouds On The Western Dayside Of An Exo-Neptune

by Keith CowingJanuary 28, 2025May 12, 2025

Highly-irradiated gas giant exoplanets are predicted to show circulation patterns dominated by day-to-night heat transport and a spatial distribution of clouds that is driven by advection and local heating.

Uranus P-T profiles plotted over H2O phase diagram.

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Ice Giant, Icy Worlds, Missions & Hardware, Status Report, Uranus

Interior and Gravity Field Models for Uranus Suggest Mixed-composition Interior: Implications for the Uranus Orbiter and Probe

by Keith CowingDecember 28, 2024May 12, 2025

The interior composition and structure of Uranus are ambiguous. It is unclear whether Uranus is composed of fully differentiated layers dominated by an icy mantle or has smooth compositional gradients.

Magnetic field of Uranus. (left) Magnetic field line geometry of Uranus for Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox in the Uranus–Sun–Orbit frame. The orbits of Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon are shown. Independent of season, the magnetic field of Umbriel (as well as Miranda and Ariel) is well shielded from external effects of the magnetosphere, making it a robust target for magnetic induction investigation of its interior (right) Fourier transform of the magnetic field of Uranus evaluated at the position of Umbriel. Note that although there are many beats and harmonics of the two fundamental frequencies, only the synodic is used here for characterization owing to its dominance over the other frequencies. -- Philos Trans A Math Phys Eng Sci via PubMed

Ariel, Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Europa, Exploration Gear & Tech, Ganymede, Ice Giant, Icy Worlds, Magnetic Fields, Electromagnetism, bioelectricity,, Miranda, Oberon, Status Report, Titania, Umbriel, Uranus, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Detecting Planetary Oceans: Application To The Uranus System

by Keith CowingDecember 8, 2024May 12, 2025

The discovery of Europa’s subsurface ocean has spawned a strong desire by the planetary community to return and assess the ocean’s habitability using the magnetic induction signal that Europa generates.