APOD: Shakespeare in Space (2023 Dec 29)

[APOD Robot]

Shakespeare in Space

Explanation: In 1986, Voyager 2 became the only spacecraft to explore ice giant planet Uranus close up. Still, this newly released image from the NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) on the James Webb Space Telescope offers a detailed look at the distant world. The tilted outer planet rotates on its axis once in about 17 hours. Its north pole is presently pointed near our line of sight, offering direct views of its northern hemisphere and a faint but extensive system of rings. Of the giant planet's 27 known moons, 14 are annotated in the image. The brighter ones show hints of Webb's characteristic diffraction spikes. And though these worlds of the outer Solar System were unknown in Shakespearean times, all but two of the 27 Uranian moons are named for characters in the English Bard's plays.

<< Previous APOD

This Day in APOD

Next APOD >>

[Ann]

I feel that Neufer, Art Neuendorffer, perhaps the greatest profile of Starship Asterisk* ever, would protest at the description of today's APOD as Shapespeare in space. This is Shakespeare is space:

3D convex shape model of 2985 Shakespeare, computed using light curve inversion techniques. Credit: Astronomical Institute of the Charles University: Josef Ďurech, Vojtěch Sidorin - DAMIT – Database of Asteroid Models from Inversion Techniques: for (2985) Shakespeare

---

Wikipedia wrote:

2985 Shakespeare (prov. designation: 1983 TV1) is a stony Koronian asteroid from the outer region of the asteroid belt. It was discovered on 12 October 1983, by American astronomer Edward Bowell at Lowell's Anderson Mesa Station near Flagstaff, Arizona, and later named after William Shakespeare.[2][9] The presumed S-type asteroid has a rotation period of 6.1 hours and measures approximately 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) in diameter.

Classification and orbit
The S-type asteroid is a member of the Koronis family, a group consisting of about 200 known bodies. It orbits the Sun in the outer main-belt at a distance of 2.7–3.0 AU once every 4 years and 10 months (1,756 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.05 and an inclination of 3° with respect to the ecliptic.[1] It was first identified as 1962 JJ at Goethe Link Observatory in 1962. The body's observation arc begins with its identification 1976 GV at Crimea–Nauchnij, 7 years prior to its official discovery observation at Anderson Mesa.[9]

Naming
This minor planet was named after William Shakespeare (1564–1616), the English renaissance dramatist and poet.[2] The approved naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 29 September 1985 (M.P.C. 10044)...

Anyway. Let's take a closer look at the JWST picture of Uranus, shall we?

I'm going to discuss the colors in the JWST image as if they were real, which of course they are not.

Okay. The rings are easy to see. There is a bright outer white ring, and inside it, there is a set of pale gray or blue-gray rings. The innermost ring is a little darker or paler than the others, and it is ever so slightly greenish. Inside the rings, there is a brownish region. What is that?

Uranus itself displays a white contour, as if a cosmic artist had drawn Uranus and started by drawing a white outline of the planet. Inside the white outline, there is a beautiful blue crescent, like a waning Moon (lovely color, I must say), and to the right of that crescent, there is a large, roundish, white region, which seems to be bordered by a pale bluish outline. The center of the white region is "extra white".

What is this white region? Is it the polar cap of Uranus?

I'd love to know the names of the background galaxies! But I can't have everything.

Ann

[alex555]

Seeing Nepture against this background of far far far galaxies is so impressive.

Alex555

[javachip3]

This is Uranus, not Neptune. JWST imaged Neptune last year. https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/new-w ... n-decades/

NASA calls Uranus' white polar region a "seasonal north polar cloud cap." https://www.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasa ... et-uranus/

It's impressive that Uranus, with apparent visual magnitude 5.6, doesn't overwhelm the much fainter background galaxies. This could be achieved with image processing, or NIRCam's wide exposure latitude, or both.

[rstevenson]

Like Ann, I’m curious about that brownish layer between the planet and its rings. Unless it’s just a processing artifact, it almost looks like the atmosphere extends out in a layer of what I’m tempted to call smog, almost all the way to the rings. Very odd. Here’s a screen grab from the central part of the image, the largest one available on the Webb site…

I am looking forward patiently to a future orbiter mission to Uranus, arriving 2044 at the earliest. Looks like a fascinating place to learn more about.

Rob

[Roy]

I prefer the Greek spelling, Ouranos. But then, I was a teacher of adolescents, middle and high school. Ouranos has an axial tilt of 98 degrees (Wikipedia has it as 82 degrees, rotating retrograde, almost certainly wrong, considering the other gas giants), rotating in 17 hours, surface gravity of 0.89 g. One could surmise that the brownish color is escaping gas thrown off, and that the rings are density resonance patterns , nodes where this gas collects. These colors are interpretations of infrared gradations, a new way of seeing for human eyes.
As to Ann’s galaxy names, I would think the cluster has a name - there are at least 20 I can see. Probably a hundred in the picture.

[Chris Peterson]

This is Uranus, not Neptune. JWST imaged Neptune last year. https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/new-w ... n-decades/

NASA calls Uranus' white polar region a "seasonal north polar cloud cap." https://www.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasa ... et-uranus/

It's impressive that Uranus, with apparent visual magnitude 5.6, doesn't overwhelm the much fainter background galaxies. This could be achieved with image processing, or NIRCam's wide exposure latitude, or both.

It's because we're not seeing this in anything close to visual wavelengths. The filters were 1.4 and 3 micrometers. So "visual magnitude" is pretty meaningless.

[johnnydeep]

So would this be the approximate location of the north pole (the red X)? If so, the blue crescent region seems hard to explain as a uniform width circumpolar band. So what is causing that?

[ EDIT: ok, I take it back. It's easy to explain the blue region as a uniform width band! It's simply that due to the axial tilt, the bulk of the band on the right side of this image is simply not visible, i.e. it's on the hemisphere that we can't see any part of. ]

[MarkBour]

I feel that Neufer, Art Neuendorffer, perhaps the greatest profile of Starship Asterisk* ever, would protest at the description of today's APOD as Shapespeare in space. This is Shakespeare is space:

• 2985 Shakespeare (prov. designation: 1983 TV1) is a stony Koronian asteroid from the outer region of the asteroid belt. It was discovered on 12 October 1983, by American astronomer Edward Bowell at Lowell's Anderson Mesa Station near Flagstaff, Arizona, and later named after William Shakespeare.[2][9]

... Inside the rings, there is a brownish region. What is that? ...

Ann

Or perhaps this is Shakespeare in Space?
Filmmaker sends portrait of Shakespeare into space as part of Folio 400 anniversary

But aye, I suppose Neufer would have objected one way or another. And then he would have drawn some very clever connection with one of the Bard's works which he knew so well. I cannot imitate, but here's a snippet for your kind consideration. It is part of the speech, a copy of which was sent up with the portrait:

A Midsummer Night's Dream Act V Scene I Theseus:
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy.
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

Like Ann, I’m curious about that brownish layer between the planet and its rings. Unless it’s just a processing artifact, it almost looks like the atmosphere extends out in a layer of what I’m tempted to call smog, almost all the way to the rings. Very odd.
...

Rob

I understand that Uranus has a corona which extends from its upper atmosphere (stratosphere cloud-tops, perhaps) outward and engulfing its inner rings. So, in this image, that seems to me to be the corona which appears as a gray smudge, visible not only within the innermost ring, but extending as far as the Nu ring. I don't know why it appears gray, it would depend on the color-mapping of the NIRcam data, and I don't know what that is.

The corona is related to the outgassing of Uranus:

• https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/revis ... re-secret/
• https://www.popsci.com/story/space/gian ... om-uranus/

The outgassing from Uranus would apparently consist of things like methane and hydrogen sulfide, among others.

[Ann]

I feel that Neufer, Art Neuendorffer, perhaps the greatest profile of Starship Asterisk* ever, would protest at the description of today's APOD as Shapespeare in space. This is Shakespeare is space:

• 2985 Shakespeare (prov. designation: 1983 TV1) is a stony Koronian asteroid from the outer region of the asteroid belt. It was discovered on 12 October 1983, by American astronomer Edward Bowell at Lowell's Anderson Mesa Station near Flagstaff, Arizona, and later named after William Shakespeare.[2][9]

... Inside the rings, there is a brownish region. What is that? ...

Ann

Or perhaps this is Shakespeare in Space?
Filmmaker sends portrait of Shakespeare into space as part of Folio 400 anniversary

But aye, I suppose Neufer would have objected one way or another. And then he would have drawn some very clever connection with one of the Bard's works which he knew so well. I cannot imitate, but here's a snippet for your kind consideration. It is part of the speech, a copy of which was sent up with the portrait:

A Midsummer Night's Dream Act V Scene I Theseus:
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That if it would but apprehend some joy.
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

Like Ann, I’m curious about that brownish layer between the planet and its rings. Unless it’s just a processing artifact, it almost looks like the atmosphere extends out in a layer of what I’m tempted to call smog, almost all the way to the rings. Very odd.
...

Rob

I understand that Uranus has a corona which extends from its upper atmosphere (stratosphere cloud-tops, perhaps) outward and engulfing its inner rings. So, in this image, that seems to me to be the corona which appears as a gray smudge, visible not only within the innermost ring, but extending as far as the Nu ring. I don't know why it appears gray, it would depend on the color-mapping of the NIRcam data, and I don't know what that is.

The corona is related to the outgassing of Uranus:

• https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/revis ... re-secret/
• https://www.popsci.com/story/space/gian ... om-uranus/

The outgassing from Uranus would apparently consist of things like methane and hydrogen sulfide, among others.

Thanks for the quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Mark! I don't know if Neufer would have appreciated it, but I do.

A scene from Britten's 'Midsummer Night's Dream' at the Metropolitan Opera. Credit: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

---

You said,

The outgassing from Uranus would apparently consist of things like methane and hydrogen sulfide, among others.

There is outgassing from Uranus of methane and hydrogen sulfide? Something tells me that Uranus doesn't smell of roses. As its name perhaps suggests.

Ann

[johnnydeep]

The outgassing from Uranus would apparently consist of things like methane and hydrogen sulfide, among others.

My how the school children would giggle if a professor had said this in Astronomy 101!

[RET]

all but two of the 27 Uranian moons

three?
Ariel, Umbriel, and Belinda are from Pope's work, I suppose.
https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Page ... nianSystem

[johnnydeep]

all but two of the 27 Uranian moons

three?
Ariel, Umbriel, and Belinda are from Pope's work, I suppose.
https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Page ... nianSystem

Hmm. You would seem to be correct. That link shows:

Uranus I (Ariel) - Named by John Herschel for a sylph in Pope's "Rape of the Lock."
Uranus II (Umbriel) - Umbriel was named by John Herschel for a malevolent spirit in Pope's "Rape of the Lock."
Uranus XIV (Belinda) - Character in Pope's "Rape of the Lock."