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Updated: Jul 21, 2026

Laboratory Drop Towers for the Experimental Simulation of Dust-aggregate Collisions in the Early Solar System
Published on: June 5, 2014
New dust belts of Uranus: one ring, two ring, red ring, blue ring
Imke de Pater1, Heidi B Hammel, Seran G Gibbard
1Astronomy Department, 601 Campbell Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. imke@astron.berkeley.edu
Abstract:
We compared near-infrared observations of the recently discovered outer rings of Uranus with Hubble Space Telescope results. We find that the inner ring, R/2003 U 2, is red, whereas the outer ring, R/2003 U 1, is very blue. Blue is an unusual color for rings; Saturn's enigmatic E ring is the only other known example. By analogy to the E ring, R/2003 U 1 is probably produced by impacts into the embedded moon Mab, which apparently orbits at a location where nongravitational perturbations favor the survival and spreading of submicron-sized dust. R/2003 U 2 more closely resembles Saturn's G ring, which is red, a typical color for dusty rings.
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