The Hubble 2020: Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) Program
Amy Simon (NASA GSFC) Michael H. Wong (U.C. Berkeley)
Glenn Orton (JPL)
What is OPAL?
• A DD Hubble campaign with WFC3/UVIS • Observe each outer planet over two rotations
every year – Generate global maps to allow 2-D wind fields – Spectral coverage to allow vertical structure and
spectral analyses
• Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune (and Saturn starting in 2018)
NOT MEANT TO SUPERCEDE/PREVENT REGULAR OUTER PLANET PROPOSALS
The Motivation
• Long term monitoring of zonal wind field, storm generation/interactions, color changes
• Too many gaps and incomplete coverage for most long-term studies
• No global winds from Hubble – biases in zonal wind
white = no data, blue = imaging only, green = wind pairs, red=high res. global maps
Existing data
What we can learn
• Periodic variations in brightness and winds tied to seasonal insolation or wave activity
• Changes in storm/cloud activity
• 2-D winds Jupiter brightness variations
Cycle 22: Uranus 2014 F845M multispectral global map pairs
FQ924N FQ727N F845M composite image of complex storm morphology
F845M rapid evolution
Wong et al. (2015) LPSC
Cycle 22: Jupiter 2015
“First results from the Hubble OPAL Program: Jupiter in 2015”, Simon et al. ApJ, submitted
MAST Archive
• Site will go live when article accepted
• Easy access to all global maps of all targets in every cycle
• Nice addition to MAST's numerous fixed-target archive projects
• https://archive.stsci.edu/prepds/opal
What’s Next • Cycle 22:
– Neptune: Sept. 2015
• Cycle 23: – Uranus: Nov. 2015 – Jupiter: Feb-March 2016 – Neptune: ~Sept. 2016
• There are other active outer planets programs for Saturn, Uranus and Neptune (especially DD time!) – OPAL provides complementary data and a longer time base for context – Other facilities also being leveraged: JVLA, ALMA, etc.
• New call for mid-Cycle proposals –
Observing the Ice Giants with Kepler
Amy Simon (NASA GSFC) Jason Rowe (SETI) Patrick Gaulme (NMSU)
K2 Mission – Ice Giant Capability
• Kepler stares at a portion of the sky • FOV crossings by Neptune and/or Uranus
– Up to 80 days of continuous observation • Long duration, rapid cadence (1 minute)
– Generate a light curve like a star / exoplanet to observe brightness oscillations
• Planetary Rotation Period • Differential Rotation - Clouds • Solar Oscillations • Planetary Oscillations – the holy grail!
– Extremely low noise levels – a few ppm
The rationale
• We expect the planets to have spherical harmonic oscillations – Predicted by Vorontsov 1976, Bercovici & Schubert 1987 – Change in radius should change the reflected solar flux
(Mosser 1995) and ring structures (Marley & Porco 1993) – Detected acoustic modes in Doppler observations of
Jupiter (Gaulme 2011) – Possibly detected in Saturn’s F-ring (Hedman & Nicholson
2013) • Generate a long duration, rapid cadence, light curve to
look for various predicted frequencies
Challenges
• Neptune and Uranus saturate detector – Use difference imaging photometry
• Periodic thruster firings for RWA desats and telescope roll corrections – Can be removed
• Looking for a very faint signal, ~2 ppm
Neptune
• 49-day observation with 98% coverage
Neptune Light Curve
Uranus
• Proposed 80-day observation with 1-minute sampling
• Contextual Hubble time already awarded (PI: J. Gizis/U. Delaware)
• STAY TUNED!
K2 Teams
• Neptune: – J.F. Rowe, P. Gaulme, M.S. Marley, J.J. Lissauer, T.
Appourchaux, F. Baudin, W. Chaplin, J. Gay, T. Guillot, J. Guzik, S. Hekker, J. Jackiewicz, J. Johnson,R. Morales-Juberías, B. Mosser, N. Murphy, D. Saumon, F.-X. Schmider, V. Silva Aguirre, A. Simon, D. Voelz
• Uranus: – J.F. Rowe, P. Gaulme, M.S. Marley, J.J. Lissauer, S.
Casewell, J. Gizis, L. Fletcher, A. Simon, H. Hammel
Other opportunities
• Be creative – WFIRST, ATLAST – LSST – TMT
• Plan for next generation!
Planetary Science in the 2030s with a High-Definition Space Telescope
Download at HDSTvision.org
New AURA Study From Cosmic Birth to Living Earths Pages 77-82 focus on Solar System studies
Pluto
New Horizons HDST
Europa
Neptune
The Hubble 2020: Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) ProgramWhat is OPAL?The MotivationWhat we can learnCycle 22: Uranus 2014Cycle 22: Jupiter 2015MAST ArchiveWhat’s NextObserving the Ice Giants with KeplerK2 Mission – Ice Giant CapabilityThe rationaleChallengesNeptuneNeptune Light CurveUranusK2 TeamsOther opportunitiesPlanetary Science in the 2030s with a �High-Definition Space Telescope