Much is said about how Earth is the "Blue Planet." There is even a well-known nature mini-series by that name. But Earth is not the only "blue planet" in our solar system. Another is Uranus. In the photo above, you can see the tiny blue fleck of Uranus to the upper left of Jupiter and its moons -- it was exposed specifically to reveal Uranus' color. (Click on the image for a better look.) Here is a close-up:
BTW, this makes seven -- the number of planets I have photographed. According to "Mary's Violet Eyes Make Joey Stay Up Nights -- Phooey!", I only have two left: Neptune and Pluto. Oh yeah, that's right: Pluto has been robbed of its planetary status. But I still think of it as a planet. How else could we give voice to Joey's crush on Mary? :-)
3 comments:
Any idea what the red light half way between Jupiter and Uranus is?
John --
Good observation! I've brightened up the image in this link to make the red/orange dot more visible:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4111/5033335297_2604573c49_o.jpg
What you saw is the red-orange star "HIP 117881":
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4129/5033954760_76088145c7_o.png
This star has Spectral Type "K5," which you can look up here, explaining the red-orange color:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_classification
Oops; Blogger.com truncated the URLs in my previous comment. Here they are again, in a shorter form:
Brightened version:
http://tinyurl.com/2enn6k9
Stellarium view of the star:
http://tinyurl.com/2875ruz
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