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