The mission Traveler 2posted by NASA, managed to provide scientists with several discoveries, mainly about the zeta ring of Uranus. This was the first mission responsible for getting to know the ice giant up close and, for this reason, the existence of rings on Uranus was discovered.
The first time the zeta ring could be detected, it disappeared for more than 15 years, leaving scientists with no explanation as to why it happened. But according to a planetary scientist named Matthew Hedman, he is believed to have only a few recordings of the ring.
The scientist completed the idea, stating it “This shows that there is a lot of information still encoded in the Voyager data that deserves a second look.”.
From the point of view of scientists, they had completely lost the ring closest to Uranus. However, when an amateur image processor managed to put together a certain amount of images and it was possible to see them up close, there was what they had “lost”. For Hedman, the processor detected and delivered “the most complete view of the zeta ring that exists and we didn’t know it was in the Voyager data for decades”.
So finally, the scientists and the researchers had the information they needed to calculate the distance between the ring and Uranus – according to the survey, the distance in question was 37,000 km – and they were also able to get an idea of its brightness.
Meanwhile, in Hawaii, more precisely at the Keck Observatory, the first impressions and observations of the zeta ring have been collected since Voyager 2 was perceived in Voyager 2 observations.
When comparing the available data from Voyager 2 and the Keck Observatory, the position of the ring has not been demonstrated in the studies. But, according to Hedman, “Something has changed in this ring in 20 years. We’re not sure what it is yet. “.
For this the discoveries do not end there, as it was observed by scientists that in the studies of the Keck Observatory there was a more intense signal. The scientist said that “[o anel] it became significantly brighter, which means that dust was introduced into the system at some point. “
Find out more about Uranus and its ring
There are several theories that have been developed about this problem and one of them concerns a collision between Uranus and a space rock, which eventually broke into small pieces and ended up settling in the zeta ring. While no in-depth details about the event are known, it is clear that the event was intense enough to cause some damage to the rings, while this was not noticed by the scientists’ radars.
