[neverdem]

A dumb question here - are those false color photographs or is that the actual color of Uranus?

I don't know.

Unless someone is a failure at reading comprehension, there are no dumb questions, IMHO.

Here's the statement from Keck: "Using the near infrared camera (NIRC2) and adaptive optics on the Keck II telescope on May 28, the team took striking images of the nearly edge-on ring appearing as a bright line bisecting a dim Uranus, which appears dark in the infrared."

SCIENTISTS STUDY CHANGES IN PLANET’S RINGS

[Izzy Dunne]

Thanks for that second article.:

From that vantage, the normally-bright outer rings grow fainter because their centimeter- to meter-sized rocks obscure one another, while the dim inner rings get brighter as their material merges into a thin band along the line of sight.

I still don't understand from this why the inner band rocks wouldn't "obscure one another" or why the outer band wouldn't "merge into a thin band along the line of sight."