This is an image of Uranus in false color.
Click on image for full size
NASA
Uranus Clouds, Overview
The
clouds of Uranus,
composed of methane crystals, are found very low in the atmosphere, and are difficult to see below the smog
haze
s of the planet. False color is used, in the image of Uranus to the right, to better show the pattern the clouds make. In the image, the atmosphere displays a
pattern of concentric circles (that is circles inside of circles). This is because the center o
f the image is the north pole. The winds of Uranus blow clouds counterclockwise in the picture, as opposed to left to right as they would in an image of
Jupiter.
Because Uranus lies on its side, with the north pole facing the sun, the seasons, and weather of Uranus should be very strange.
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The methane clouds of Uranus are found low in the atmosphere. The methane clouds are the only clouds to be found on Uranus, but there are hazes of smog high in the atmosphere. The diagram shows that the
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Besides methane, Uranus' atmosphere contains even more complex molecules such as ethane gas. (These gases are similar to the exhaust gases that come out of cars on earth). These molecules form layers of
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The clouds on Uranus, like Jupiter, are divided into belts and zones. On Uranus the belts and zones are hard to find. The left picture shows the north pole of Uranus. In this picture only the smog of
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As a planet orbits the sun, if its rotation axis is tilted, the portion that is tilted toward the sun will receive an excess of sunlight and energy (summer), while the hemisphere which is tilted away
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The weather on earth can be described this way: air rises at the equator, where it is warm, and moves to the poles where it is colder and the air sinks. Because Uranus lies on its side, with the north
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The mesosphere of Uranus is a region of balance between warming and cooling. That essentially means that nothing happens there. Except for diffusion, the atmosphere is still. Upper reaches of the atmosphere,
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As on Earth, the atmosphere of Uranus consists of a troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, and thermosphere. The troposphere is the region where the visible clouds are to be found. The stratosphere, as
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