All posts by hungry joe

November 14, 2024: Cosmic Coincidence

The new word on the street is Uranus actually does have plasma in its magnetosphere. Voyager 2 spent a scant 5 hours flying past it (which is still where almost all of our data on the planet is from) and it seems like it may have coincided with a "co-rotating interaction region" from the sun. Or, in a period of increased solar activity, the sun ejected long streams of plasma to the edge of the solar system. This caused a strong but temporary drop of plasma in the planet's magnetosphere. It just so happened that around this time is just when Voyager 2 scuttled past. Hope we get a closer look soon.