Uranus: following Neptune to conjunction

Event Date: January 22nd

Time: 8:00 PM

Brief

   Yesterday while showing Neptune low, I ended the entry by mentioning another distant planet not far from conjunction: Uranus, that is.  I labeled this "near-twin" of Neptune in the image below.  The two are not much different in diameter: about one of that for Earth, with Uranus larger by about 30%.  They are also both gas planets, along with a color similarity (more on that in the detailed section).  Most importantly, Uranus' movement of speeding up and slowing down against the stars, "independantly using Newton's laws of gravity" helped astronomers find Neptune in a certain part of the sky.  Although I retrieved the above quote from the software itself, read this information.  

Here are the planets labeled.

Detailed

   Once again, as with the image, I will use information from the Starry Night software to talk about the gases and colors of the planets:

"The compounds that give Jupiter and Saturn their color, are frozen in the clouds of Uranus, and we see only the blue-green color from its traces of methane."

For Neptune, the blue color is deeper than Uranus' with almost no sign of even slight-green.  To learn more about the gases and colors of both, you can find that here. 

Neptune's explanation is a little simpler, in my opinion!  In any case, remember that the color we see is the [Sun]light that gets reflected back to our eyes.  Just about any color that we cannot see is instead, absorbed, and do not come back to our eyes.

   Although we lose Uranus to atmospheric pollution and then the Sun's glare, we will have it well placed again for viewing during summer mornings, and fall evenings.  Seen in Pisces, with its "brightest" stars not much brighter than the planet itself, seeing Uranus with optical aid shows a star-field of stars not much dimmer than it's 5.8; most are between 7 and 9, with a 5 or 6 here and there.  Take a look at this image of a 1/2º field (about 100x magnified) to see the stars around Uranus this evening, and for the next few days; how many exactly, depending on the size of field used.

click on images to enlarge: courtesy of Starry Night Pro Plus, version 6.4.3, by Simulation Curriculum Corp.