NASA's Hubble and New Horizons Reveal New Insights on Uranus

The collaboration provides valuable data for future exoplanet observation missions, advancing our understanding of distant planetary atmospheres.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and New Horizons spacecraft collaborated to observe Uranus from different vantage points, offering a unique perspective on the planet's atmosphere.
Hubble captured high-resolution images of Uranus' clouds and storms, while New Horizons, located 6.5 billion miles away, observed the planet as a small dot, similar to how exoplanets are viewed.
The study found Uranus to be dimmer than expected in New Horizons' data, highlighting how light is reflected differently at various angles, which is crucial for interpreting distant exoplanet images.
These observations serve as a test case for future missions like the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the Habitable Worlds Observatory, which aim to study exoplanets and search for signs of habitability.
The findings were presented at the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences meeting, emphasizing the importance of using known benchmarks like Uranus to prepare for future astronomical missions.