Uranus Auroras Glimpsed from Earth For the first time,
scientists have captured images of auroras above the gas giant
Uranus. Unlike auroras on Earth, which can turn the sky greens
and purples for hours, the newly detected auroras on Uranus are
fainter and appeared to only last a couple minutes, detected
twice on the dayside of Uranus. The unfamiliar appearance of the
auroras is due to Uranus’ rotational weirdness and peculiar
traits of its magnetic axis, which is both offset from the
center of the planet and lists at an angle of 60 degrees from
the rotational axis. The magnetic field is thought to be
generated by a salty ocean within the planet, resulting in the
off-center magnetic axis. Capturing the new images of Uranus’s
auroras resulted from a combination of good luck and careful
planning. In 2011, Earth, Jupiter and Uranus were lined up so
that the solar wind could flow from the Sun, past Earth and
Jupiter, and then toward Uranus. When the Sun produced several
large bursts of charged particles in mid-Se