The Ice Giants

Uranus and two of its moons, Oberon and Titania as imaged from our backyard using a Canon 600D DSLR attached to my Meade 127mmm refracting telescope.

 Uranus will reach opposition (its nearest point to earth in the year) on the 7th October. Neptune is just past  opposition. As the early hours of the 25th of September were clear and transparent, I turned my telescope and camera towards the ice giant planets, Uranus and Neptune. Both shine by reflected sunlight and both are a very long way away.
 

The planet Uranus in a wide-field starry background

An infrared composite image of the two hemispheres of Uranus obtained with Keck Telescope adaptive optics. The component colors of blue, green, and red were obtained from images made at near infrared wavelengths of 1.26, 1.62, and 2.1 microns respectively. The images were obtained on July 11 and 12, 2004. The North pole is at 4 o'clock. Credit for image:
Lawrence Sromovsky, University of Wisconsin-Madison/ W.W. Keck Observatory

 Uranus is named after the progenitor of the Titans and father of Saturn. Uranus is an unusual planet in that it has a retrograde orbit around the Sun, it barrels along with its equatorial plane inclined at 98 degrees to its orbital plane. It is a world in deep freeze and has a blackbody temperature of only 59 degrees Kelvin above absolute zero.  Like Saturn, Uranus has rings but much much fainter and so they remained undiscovered until the Voyager spacecraft passed by in January 1986.  Uranus has 27 known moons, the largest Oberon and Titania were discovered by William Herschel in 1787.

For more facts about Uranus follow the link
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/uranusfact.html 

Neptune and its largest moon Triton (possibly) as imaged from our backyard using a Canon 600D DSLR attached to my Meade 127mmm refracting telescope.

Neptune is the last of the Jovian planets and the eighth planet from the sun. Unlike Uranus it has an internal heat source but as the heat it absorbs from sunlight is so reduced by its extreme distance from the sun, its temperature is only about 59 degrees Kelvin. The  Voyager spacecraft and the Hubble Space Telescope have both imaged a Great Dark Spot in Neptune's clouds.

The planet Neptune in a wide-field starry background

Neptune as imaged by the Voyager space craft in 1989 from a distance of 5000km

Neptune has fourteen known moons. Triton, the largest moon has a retrograde motion.  Neptune and Uranus are both gas giants with similar densities and masses. Their cold atmospheres contain water ice and ammonia ice mixed with gaseous methane, hydrogen and helium.

For more facts about Neptune follow the link:
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/neptunefact.html

Credits: Wikipedia and NASA