Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Oct 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010dps....42.1125f&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #42, #11.25; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.1022
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
The recently updated Uranus zonal wind profile (Sromovsky et al. 2009, Icarus 203, 265-286) samples latitudes from 71°S to 73°N. But many latitudes remain grossly undersampled (outside 20-45°S and 20-50°N) due to a lack of trackable cloud features, and at some latitudes most of the features have a likely connection to a single eddy that generates them, so that their motions may be controlled by the generating feature rather than serving as passive tracers of the mean mass flow. A more complete wind profile, reflecting the true mean mass flow, would provide numerical modelers a firmer foundation from which to develop better theoretical understanding of the dynamics of uranian weather systems. Offering some hope to fill these gaps is our recent discovery that there are far more cloud tracers in our Keck II NIRC2 near-IR imagery than we had previously noticed. But they are only visible with imaging that has much higher signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) than previously obtained. Using 2007 observations we made a proof-of-concept average of 11 one-minute H band exposures acquired over a 1.6-hour time span, rectilinearly remapped and zonally shifted to account for planetary rotation. This increased SNR by about a factor of 3.3. A new fine structure in latitude bands appeared, small previously unobservable cloud tracers became discernible, and some faint cloud features became prominent. While we could produce one such high-quality average, we could not produce enough to actually track the newly-revealed features. This requires a specially designed observational effort, that to be most useful should be conducted in the near future, while Uranus’ southern hemisphere is still mostly visible. We have designed recent HST WFC3 F845M observations to allow application of the technique, and will show results.
Acknowledgements: support was provided by STScI and the NASA Planetary Astronomy program.
de Pater Imke
Fry Patrick M.
Hammel Heidi Beth
Rages Kathy Ann
Sromovsky Lawrence A.
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