Astronomy Department Research Project
Project Description
OPAL—the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy program—maps each planet for two consecutive rotations, every year, using the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on Hubble.
The main goal of OPAL is to observe each of the giant planets for long-duration time-domain studies of storm activity, wind field variability, and changes in aerosol distributions and colors. The data are being used with older Hubble and other spacecraft data sets to expand the time domain even further.
Project Photos
Rapid cloud evolution on Uranus: cloud feature fades in 45 min even after geometric correction (Wong et al. 2015).
A new type of wave seen in Jupiter's atmosphere (Simon et al. 2015).
Using OPAL data to measure the shrinking Great Red Spot on Jupiter (Simon et al. 2018).
OPAL images show individual cloud features responsible for lightcurve variation in K2 Neptune observations (Simon et al. 2016).
Global map and jet speeds (yellow) of Jupiter, from OPAL 2016 data. Speeds range from -50 to +150 m/s (Tollefson et al. 2017).
Discovery and evolution of a new dark vortex on Neptune (Wong et al. 2018).
