Atmosphere of Uranus at the solstice of 1986, when "Voyager 2" passed by the planet, they were concentrated near the sunlit pole, making it dark in ultraviolet light. The outermost layer of the Uranian atmosphere, extending for thousands of kilometres, is the thermosphere/exosphere, which has a uniform temperature of around 800 to 850 K. This is much higher than, for instance, the 420 K observed in the thermosphere of Saturn. The heat sources necessary to sustain such high temperatures are not understood, since neither solar FUV/EUV radiation nor auroral activity can provide the necessary energy. The weak cooling efficiency due to the depletion
Mass concentration (astronomy) Mass concentration (astronomy) In astronomy and astrophysics, a mass concentration (or mascon) is a region of a planet or moon's crust that contains a large positive gravitational anomaly. In general, the word "mascon" can be used as a noun to refer to an excess distribution of mass on or beneath the surface of an astronomical body (with respect to some suitable average), such as is found around Hawaii on Earth. However, this term is most often used to describe a geologic structure that has a positive gravitational anomaly associated with a feature (e.g. depressed basin) that might otherwise have been