Old information on Neptune and Uranus

[aerogi]

I have a weird question... <br /><br />I wonder how the world knew Uranus and Neptune before Voyager 2 arrived? What where the best pictures made so far at that point? I assume nothing spectacular... I have found a pdf-file somewhere, with a huge article of 1972, and at that point they knew nothing really about the colours, or how the 'discs' looked like. At that point, Pluto still had no moon and was thought to be about 6,900 km diameter!<br /><br />So just out of curiosity, what was the 'conception' of these huge planets about that point? I have found some great PDF files with information of the planets before the arrivals of the Mariners, Galileo and Cassini. Does anyone knows where to find something similar of the arrivals of Voyager at Neptune and Uranus? <br /><br />I really like reading such 'historic' documents.

 

[vogon13]

Statoscope project in seventies carried a fairly large telescope pretty high in earth's atmosphere with a large balloon. I only remember seeing a print of Uranus picture. Uranus was going thru a 'bland' period then and picture didn't really show much. Seems like after ring occulatation discovery they went back and enhanced Uranus picture and could just barely make out ring crossing disc of Uranus. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#ff0000"><strong>TPTB went to Dallas and all I got was Plucked !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#339966"><strong>So many people, so few recipes !!</strong></font></p><p><font color="#0000ff"><strong>Let's clean up this stinkhole !!</strong></font> </p> </div>

 

[thalion]

I can recommend two books: Eric Burgess's <i>Uranus and Neptune: The Distant Giants</i>, made after the Voyager encounter with Uranus but before Neptune's, and Paul Doherty's <i>Atlas of the Planets</i>, made well before both encounters. The latter book is geared more towards amateur astronomers than researchers, though. <br /><br />Really, there isn't much about the two planets before the Voyager encounters; usually the raw information learned could be fit on one page for each.