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A day on Uranus is about half a minute longer than previously thought , according to new enquiry .
An analysis of 11 year ofHubble Space Telescopeobservations evidence thatUranus ' sidereal day lasts 17 hours , 14 minutes , and 52 seconds . That ’s 28 moment longer than NASA ’s Voyager 2 spacecraft estimated when it passed Uranus in 1986 . researcher report the update estimation April 7 in the journalNature Astronomy .
By tracking the movement of Uranus' auroras, researchers determined that the planet’s rotation period is about 28 seconds longer than previously thought.
closely 40 years ago , Voyager 2became the first ballistic capsule to observe Uranus up - close . Using tuner signals from the planet ’s auroras and magnetic field data pull together by the spacecraft , astronomers at the sentence found that Uranus ' day live on around 17 60 minutes , 14 minute and 24 seconds .
researcher used that rotary motion stop to delineate a co-ordinate scheme for the planet . But the measured menstruum came with an inherent dubiety of about 36 seconds , which bit by bit bring up as each Uranian solar day passed . Within a few years , the uncertainty made it impossible to accurately determine the preference of the planet ’s charismatic axis .
To get more reliable estimates of the satellite ’s rotational period , the authors of the new study tracked the movement of aurora at Uranus ' magnetic pole from six sets of Hubble observations taken between 2011 and 2022 . This help them refine the locations of the satellite ’s magnetized poles , which they used to work out a more accurate estimation of Uranus ' rotational full stop . The unexampled measurement has an uncertainty of less than 0.04 seconds , according to the team .
" The uninterrupted observation from Hubble were crucial , " first discipline authorLaurent Lamy , an astronomer at the Paris Observatory , said in astatement . " Without this wealthiness of data , it would have been impossible to detect the periodic signal with the floor of accuracy we achieved . "
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The 28 - second difference is within the leeway of erroneousness of Voyager 2 ’s deliberation , but the fresh duration has a much blue uncertainty . " It ’s not so much that it ’s changed,“Tim Bedding , an stargazer at the University of Sydney in Australia , toldNew Scientist . " It ’s now accurate enough to be more useful . "
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With this smaller incertitude , the coordinate organization based on the Modern measure of Uranus ' rotational catamenia should hold up for several ten , the team said . Future missions to Uranus , such as the proposedUranus Orbiter and Probe , could rely on this coordinate system when selecting an atmospherical incoming situation , the researchers wrote in the study .
" With this novel longitude system , we can now liken aurorean observations cross nearly 40 years and even design for the upcoming Uranus mission , " Lamy said in the statement .
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