{"id":212187,"date":"2025-04-23T05:15:28","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T10:15:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/planetary-alignment-provides-nasa-rare-opportunity-to-study-uranus"},"modified":"2025-04-23T05:15:28","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T10:15:28","slug":"planetary-alignment-provides-nasa-rare-opportunity-to-study-uranus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/planetary-alignment-provides-nasa-rare-opportunity-to-study-uranus","title":{"rendered":"Planetary alignment provides NASA rare opportunity to study Uranus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/planetary-alignment-provides-nasa-rare-opportunity-to-study-uranus2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When a planet\u2019s orbit brings it between Earth and a distant star, it\u2019s more than just a cosmic game of hide and seek. It\u2019s an opportunity for NASA to improve its understanding of that planet\u2019s atmosphere and rings. Planetary scientists call it a stellar occultation and that\u2019s exactly what happened with Uranus on April 7.<\/p>\n<p>Observing the alignment allows NASA scientists to measure the temperatures and composition of Uranus\u2019s stratosphere\u2014the middle layer of a planet\u2019s atmosphere\u2014and determine how it has changed over the last 30 years since Uranus\u2019s last significant occultation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUranus passed in front of a star that is about 400 light years from Earth,\u201d said William Saunders, planetary scientist at NASA\u2019s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and science principal investigator and analysis lead, for what NASA\u2019s team calls the Uranus Stellar Occultation Campaign 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When a planet\u2019s orbit brings it between Earth and a distant star, it\u2019s more than just a cosmic game of hide and seek. It\u2019s an opportunity for NASA to improve its understanding of that planet\u2019s atmosphere and rings. Planetary scientists call it a stellar occultation and that\u2019s exactly what happened with Uranus on April 7. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-212187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}