Uranus System Imaging Options

[Phil Stooke]

I only just noticed Steve's question about Pixie Chasma above - the Chasma is right underneath the label.

Phil

[morganism]

Keck observations bring weather of Uranus into sharp focus

http://phys.org/news/2012-10-keck-weather-...harp-focus.html

[Ken90000]

Wow. The resolution is incredible. It will be interesting to see the evolution of those features near the pole over the next few years. Cannot wait to see what they do with Neptune.

[Phil Stooke]

Yes, they really are amazing. I would like to see Ceres imaged like that now!

Phil

[MarcF]

Wow, I cannot believe it ! Uranus as we never have seen it ! Looks a lot like Jupiter !

[JohnVV]

time to remap the above keck images and incorporate it into the Uranus map
old map - Artists concept


getting any good data out of the voyager images is not easy

[Bjorn Jonsson]

WOW!!! To me these may be the planetary images of the year 2012. I feel like I'm looking at a completely new planet. Of the two ice giants it has always been Uranus that seemed to be more different visually from Jupiter/Saturn but now it suddenly seems the opposite may be true. It looks remarkably similar to Saturn. It's not only the north polar region that looks similar to Saturn's south polar region - Saturn has scalloped bands as well.

I never stop wondering what Voyager 2 would have seen had it been able to carry a Galileo/Cassini style imaging system, i.e. a CCD camera with near infrared filters. Uranus is so much more active-looking at infrared wavelength than it is in visible light. This is a great example of the fact that planets that look visually bland are not uninteresting. They are just more difficult to study.

I have said it before and I'm going to repeat it ;-) : I want a Uranus orbiter or flyby mission in my lifetime.

[tasp]

I want a Uranus orbiter or flyby mission in my lifetime.

Bjorn


Don't recall if you were here 'back in the day' but we learned a 'Galileo' style orbital tour of Uranus with many close satellite flybys is possible since Uranus and it's entourage are scaled, so to speak, down model of Jupiter system.

It could be a very exciting mission.

[machi]

Amazing images and amazing technical story. I remember from late 80's, that even in the biggest telescopes, we could see Uranus like small bluish disc nearly without any discernible details.
Then HST came and first nice images from outer Solar system. And now we have telescopes with adaptive optics, which can produce such sharp images.
And before us is new ELT era. So as everyone here, I want Uranus orbiter, but even without it, we can expect even better images in "near" future (~20's).

[Phil Stooke]

Just fooling around with images - and a big thankyou to the creators of these original images, obviously.

I have merged one of the spectacular new images with a true (-er) colour image released a while ago (it's the one with the dark spot - if you look closely you will see it faintly shining through, and there's a new dark spot in the new image as well, at a different latitude). Purpose - just to show the new details in a manner a bit closer to the expected colours of Uranus. Disclaimer - the colours of the cloud belts change over time and the two images will not really match properly. This is just for illustration purposes.

Phil

[elakdawalla]

Tonight was the poster session where Larry Sromovsky was showing these images and I just about fell over when I saw them. Sromovsky was downplaying it, saying it was "easy" when you had adaptive optics on a 10-meter telescope with great seeing and high signal-to-noise. Easy for him to say Leigh Fletcher was standing next to me and saying "these are the greatest images of Uranus in the history of mankind. And womankind."

[belleraphon1]

Incredible.... can hardly believe these are from ground based telescopes.

What beautiful mysterious worlds these ice-giants are!

Craig

[MarcF]

Finally, "real" Uranus looks quite like the expectations previous to the Voyager flyby !