Link to Voyage to the planets: 4- Neptune and Uranus documentary
Documentary Description
Got time for a 24 year holiday? Then consider a journey to our most
distant and least explored planets, the ice giants Uranus and Neptune.
When
it comes to public image, the planet with the funny name has always had
it tough. But if you think Uranus is a strange name for a planet,
perhaps you’d prefer its first name… George. When British astronomer,
William Herschel, first discovered the planet in 1781, he christened his
discovery after the King of England, George III. But the custom of
naming planets after mythological characters ensued and ‘Planet George’
was no more.
From above, Uranus appears as a fathomless ball of
green-blue fog. But dip below its clouds and you encounter a boiling
ocean, a hundred times deeper than the Pacific. With a planet load of
gas on your back, nothing down here will survive for long.
Of all
the planets, the seventh world from the Sun is the most laid back of
all – literally. Uranus circles the Sun on its side. How did it end up
this way? The answer may surprise. Meanwhile, snap your cameras at
Uranus’ tilted hula-hoop rings and its orbiting flotilla of 27 moons
that resemble a giant, celestial bullseye.
Cruise down the cosmic
highway for another three years and you encounter the last official
planet in our Solar System, and a reminder of home. Neptune is the
second Blue Planet, the colour courtesy of some mysterious alchemy
that’s hard at work in the frozen atmosphere. But does this chilly gas
giant who takes its name from the god of the sea really a water world?
You’ll need to take the plunge to find out.
For all its surreal
blue calm, Neptune is a wild world. It boasts the fastest, supersonic
winds in the Solar System. But what’s driving them? And what became of
its Great Dark Spot that disappeared only five years after its
discovery?
And no visit to the ice giants is complete without a
daytrip to Neptune’s moon, Triton. Its gushing, inky ice-volcanoes are
proof that even way out here, the Solar System still has a few
incredible tricks up its sleeve.
There’s only ever been one
Earthly visitor to this ice zone, the Voyager mission, launched in 1977.
What would it be like to follow in its wake, for a human to undertake
one of the greatest journeys in space exploration? How would you get
there? What would you see? And would you ever survive? Strap yourselves
in for an incredible voyage into the chiller.
