The Dark Spot in the Atmosphere of Uranus in 2006: Discovery, Description, and Dynamical Simulations

Details The Dark Spot in the Atmosphere of Uranus in 2006: Discovery, Description, and Dynamical Simulations The Dark Spot in the Atmosphere of Uranus in 2006: Discovery, Description, and Dynamical Simulations

Jan 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21340107h&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #213, #401.07; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.189

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We report the first multi-wavelength detection of a discrete dark atmospheric feature on Uranus in 2006 using visible and near-infrared images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck II 10-m telescope. Like Neptune's Great Dark Spots, this Uranus Dark Spot had bright companion features that exhibited considerable variability in brightness and location relative to the Dark Spot. We detected the feature and/or its bright companions on 16 June (Hubble), 30 July and 1 August (Keck), 23-24 August (Hubble), and 15 October (Keck). The dark feature -- detected at latitude 28 +/- 1 deg N with an average physical extent of roughly 2 degrees (1300 km) in latitude and 5 degrees (2700 km) in longitude -- moved with a nearly constant zonal velocity of 43.1 +/- 0.1 m/s, which is roughly 20 m/s greater than the average observed speed of bright features at this latitude. The dark feature's contrast and extent varied as a function of wavelength, with largest negative contrast occurring at a surprisingly long wavelength when compared with Neptune's dark features: the Uranus feature was detected out to 1.6 microns with a contrast of -0.07, but it was undetectable at 0.467 microns; the Neptune GDS seen by Voyager exhibited its most prominent contrast of -0.12 at 0.48 microns, and was undetectable longward of 0.7 microns. Computational fluid dynamic simulations of the dark feature on Uranus suggest that structure in the zonal wind profile may be a critical factor in the emergence of large sustained vortices. The Uranus Hubble observations were supported through STScI GO grants 10170, 10534, 10805, 11118, 11190, and 11156. This work was supported in part by NASA grants: NNX06AD12G, NNG06GI25G, and NNX07AO43G (HBH); NNG05GF00G and NNG05G084G (LS); and NNX07AK70G (IdP).

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