Imaging Uranus at Submillimeter to Centimeter Wavelengths

Details Imaging Uranus at Submillimeter to Centimeter Wavelengths Imaging Uranus at Submillimeter to Centimeter Wavelengths

Sep 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006dps....38.0506h&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #38, #05.06; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.488

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

1

Scientific paper

Over the last few years, we have regularly imaged Uranus using the Very Large Array. This is part of a multi-wavelength observing campaign studying atmospheric conditions as the planet approaches and moves through its late 2007 equinox. Our previous data, at wavelengths from 0.7 to 20 cm, are sensitive to the 5 to 50 bar region and show the deep troposphere to be much more hemispherically symmetric than visible and near-IR images of the 0.5 to 1 bar region. This means that conditions in the fall and spring hemispheres are more similar at depth than at altitude. Both altitude regions, however, show changes over time. We find that the deep troposphere has surprisingly strong horizontal variations in conditions, and that seasonal variability penetrates deeper than expected. Consistent with the idea of solar-forced seasonal changes, however, the upper troposphere is more temporally variable than the deeper atmosphere.
In July of 2006, we successfully imaged Uranus with subarcsecond resolution at wavelengths of 1.3 and 0.85 millimeter using the Submillimeter Array on Mauna Kea. These data, which we believe to be the first maps of Uranus at these wavelengths, are sensitive to the same altitude region as some of the visible and near-IR data. This will allow us to compare how the temperature and microwave opacity of the uppermost troposphere (determined by our data) compare to the distribution of clouds and hazes (determined by the visible/near-IR data). Interpretation of these new submillimeter data will be presented at the conference. We will also present the latest VLA images at centimeter wavelengths, made in the last few months.
This work was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with NASA. We acknowledge the support of NASA's Planetary Astronomy program, and of the VLA and SMA observatories.

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