First Observation of a Uranian Mutual Event
The major satellites of Uranus as viewed by Voyager 2 in January 1986. Shown, from left to right and in order of increasing distance from the planet, are Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon. Image courtesy Paul M. Schenk, Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston.
An international team of astronomers led by Apostolos Christou at Armagh Observatory has made the first ever observation of one of the satellites of the planet Uranus passing in front of another. The observation was made on the night of 4th May by Marton Hidas and Tim Brown, of the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope, Santa Barbara, California, using the robotic Faulkes Telescope South at Siding Spring Observatory, Australia. This work involves a collaboration between scientists at Siding Spring, Las Cumbres, Armagh and Cardiff University.
When one satellite passes in front of another, the phenomenon is known as an occultation; when one moves into the shadow of another it is an eclipse. Collectively, occultations and eclipses are called mutual events. These provide a means to determine the positions of the satellites with exceptional precision, better than any optical telescope, but they are rare. In the case of Uranus, a season of mutual events occurs just once every 42 years, each individual event lasting just a few minutes. At the time of the last Uranian mutual event season, Man had yet to walk on the Moon. Not surprisingly, no-one had successfully recorded any mutual event involving these extremely faint satellites, which are 3,000 million kilometres from Earth.
But this situation changed this month, when the Faulkes telescope observed the satellite Oberon (named after the тАЬKing of Shadows and FairiesтАЭ in Shakespeare's тАЬA Midsummer Night's DreamтАЭ) occulting Umbriel (the тАЬdusky melancholy spriteтАЭ in Alexander Pope's poem тАЬThe Rape of the LockтАЭ). As Oberon's disc encroached upon Umbriel's, gradually blocking off UmbrielтАЩs light, the combined brightness of the moons dropped by about a third.
Measurements of such changes in brightness, and comparison with models of the satellites' motions, allow astronomers to work out the masses of the moons and the effects of the shape of Uranus on their orbits, and to model their surface features. The current Uranian mutual-event season is expected to lead to some of the greatest advances in the study of the Uranian system since the flyby of the Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1986.
This observation kicks off a campaign extending from now into 2008 to observe the entire mutual event season. It highlights the value of the North and South Faulkes telescopes for recording rare, time-critical events. And because the telescopes have an educational focus, the data will eventually be used not just by astronomers but also by schools and schoolchildren worldwide.
Animation of 6 images of the mutual event using current information on the satellite orbits and surfaces. Frames are separated by 5 minutes. The areas of the satellite surfaces that were not imaged during the Voyager 2 flyby in 1986 are unknown, and are shown as grey. Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT: Apostolos Christou or David Asher, Armagh Observatory, Tel. 028-3752-2928, Email: aac
arm.ac.uk; djaarm.ac.uk.
| Last Revised: 2007 May 16th |
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