There are some stories you tell because they describe amazing discoveries. There are others you tell because you love the double-entendre headline. Some are both. This is one of them. Is there intelligent life on Uranus – the cold planet whose name everyone except astronomers love to mispronounce? That’s just one of the possible explanations for the first X-rays ever seen emanating from Uranus. Get your giggles out of your system now because this is a baffling astronomy mystery from an already strange planet.
“In the new study, researchers used Chandra observations taken in Uranus in 2002 and then again in 2017. They saw a clear detection of X-rays from the first observation, just analyzed recently, and a possible flare of X-rays in those obtained fifteen years later. The main graphic shows a Chandra X-ray image of Uranus from 2002 (in pink) superimposed on an optical image from the Keck-I Telescope obtained in a separate study in 2004. The latter shows the planet at approximately the same orientation as it was during the 2002 Chandra observations.”