SoylentNews

Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

New Atlas [newatlas.com]:

While Saturn's ostentatious rings have been known since 1610, Uranus's faint ring system is a relatively recent discovery, only made in 1977, and more rings were discovered when Voyager 2 whizzed past for a closer look in 1986. The rings only reflect a small amount of light in the optical and near-infrared parts of the spectrum, which normally makes them hard to see.

That historical dimness makes the new shots, snapped by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Very Large Telescope (VLT), all the more astounding. In these thermal emission images, the first ever taken of Uranus, the rings are clearly visible around the smelly, unfortunately-named planet. The dark bands in the upper atmosphere are thanks to large amounts of molecules that absorb radio waves, while the bright spot at the north pole indicates an area mostly devoid of these molecules.
...
The study also helped to confirm that Uranus's brightest and densest ring, the epsilon ring, is very different to other known systems. Saturn gets its trademark bling thanks to a ring system made up of differently-sized objects, from microscopic dust particles to roughly house-sized boulders. But Uranus's rings are mostly made up of relatively large objects.

Uranus's rings are hard to see and comprise large chunks.

Original Submission