Uranus System Imaging Options

[machi]

I finished my first good image of Uranus.
Planet is colorized from three filtered images (orange, green, blue).
Slightly brownish color of rings is entirely artificial.

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Bjorn Jonsson]

Uranus once looked dull but it really isn't - it's a very interesting planet. The problem is the thick hazes which make any features difficult to observe unless infrared imaging is used. There really is a lot of activity there and I'm starting to get the impression that if you count the number of active-looking features, storms, bright and dark spots etc. it might actually be more active than Neptune. I'm no expert here though so take this with a grain of salt (but it would be interesting to know if this is true).

But it turns out that the big, bright feature visible in the right image above is actually the biggest storm ever observed on Uranus, see e.g. here and here. In fact it's so big that it has been imaged by amateur astronomers. A movie by Anthony Wesley can be seen here:

http://www.acquerra.com.au/astro/gallery/o...-storm-anim.gif

And his gallery of Uranus images is well worth visiting (other targets can also be seen at his website):

http://www.acquerra.com.au/astro/gallery/other/index.live

In addition, HST observed the storm in mid-October but as far as I know the images haven't appeared anywhere yet. It will be interesting to see them.

And here is an enhanced version of the images above. I processed it to reveal small scale features more clearly :