NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has confirmed that a day at Uranus takes approximately 17 hours, 14 minutes, and 52 seconds to complete, making it 28 seconds longer than previously estimated. A decade-long study of aurora observations led by the Paris Observatory found this precise rotation period for the seventh planet from the sun.
The study’s lead author, Laurent Lamy, praised the continuous observations from Hubble as “crucial” in achieving the accurate measurement. The findings aim to aid in pinpointing the rotation of any world with auroras and a magnetosphere.
This new approach comes ahead of the 35th anniversary of Hubble’s launch on April 24, 1990, when NASA’s space shuttle Discovery delivered the telescope to orbit.
Source: https://apnews.com/article/uranus-nasa-hubble-19a4d69e0778704a4fd01e6a6f6bd814