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Mystifying Magnetic Field of Uranus

November 18 , 2024 4 days 96 0
  • NASA’s robotic spacecraft Voyager 2 conducted a five-day flyby over Uranus in 1986.
  • The Voyager 2 observations left a misimpression about the magnetosphere of Uranus.
  • During the fly, it is lacking in plasma and possessing uncommonly intense belts of highly energetic electrons.
  • The probe visited at a time of unusual conditions - an intense solar wind event - that led to misleading observations about Uranus, and specifically its magnetic field.
  • So, this event compressed Uranus’s magnetosphere during the observation.
  • The absence of plasma had previously led scientists to believe the moons were dormant.
  • But the new findings suggested that the Uranus’s five major moons may not be geologically inactive.
  • Magnetosphere is a region of space surrounding a planet where the planet’s magnetic field dominates.
  • It is creating a protective zone against solar and cosmic particle radiation.
  • Uranus is big enough to fit 63 Earths inside it.
  • It orbits almost 20 times further from the sun than Earth does and has 28 known moons and two sets of rings.

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