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Observing the Ice Giants with Kepler

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Observing the Ice Giants with Kepler 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 Existing data white = no data, blue = imaging only, green = wind pairs, red=high res. global maps • Too many gaps and incomplete coverage for most long-term studies • No global winds from Hubble – biases in zonal wind 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 Wong et al. (2015) rapid evolution 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/prep ds/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 – <5 orbits, must justify why it can’t/couldn’t be in a regular cycle 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 New AURA Study From Cosmic Birth to Living Earths Pages 77-82 focus on Solar System studies Pluto New Horizons HDST Europa Neptune Download at HDSTvision.org .
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