Nasa plans to study Uranus ‘from behind’ – and it needs your help

Nasa has put out a call for Earthlings to assist in their new research while they check out the backside of Uranus.

Their New Horizons spacecraft plans to observe Uranus and Neptune from its location far out in the outer solar system this autumn, and the mission team is inviting the global amateur astronomy community to contribute.

Nasa say space watchers with telescopes as small as 16 inches can ‘come along for the ride – and make a real contribution to space science – by observing both ice giants at the same time’.

In September – in tandem with the Hubble Space Telescope – New Horizons will turn its colour camera toward Uranus and Neptune.

‘From New Horizons’ position in the Kuiper Belt, more than five billion miles from Earth, these unique images acquired from ‘behind’ the two giant planets will provide new insights into the atmospheres above and the energy balance within both worlds,’ said Nasa.

Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, added: ‘By combining the information New Horizons collects in space with data from telescopes on Earth, we can supplement and even strengthen our models to uncover the mysteries swirling in the atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune.

‘Even from amateur astronomer telescopes as small as 16 inches, these complementary observations can be extremely important.’

With New Horizons and Hubble focused on the details of the planets’ atmospheres and the transfer of heat from their rocky cores through their gaseous exteriors, observers on Earth can measure the distribution of bright features on Uranus or characterise any unusually bright features on Neptune.