Drift rates of major Neptunian features between 2018 and 2021 ...

• Main Authors: Chavez, Erandi, Redwing, Erin, de Pater, Imke, Hueso, Ricardo, Molter, Edward M., Wong, Michael H., Alvarez, Carlos, Gates, Elinor, de Kleer, Katherine, Aycock, Joel, Mcilroy, Jason, Pelletier, John, Ridenour, Anthony, Sánchez-Lavega, Agustín, Rojas, Jose Félix, Stickel, Terry
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Elsevier 2023
• Subjects: Space and Planetary Science; Astronomy and Astrophysics; South pole
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.7907/1hr5q-rmg96; https://authors.library.caltech.edu/doi/10.7907/1hr5q-rmg96

Using near-infrared observations of Neptune from the Keck and Lick Observatories, and the Hubble Space Telescope in combination with amateur datasets, we calculated the drift rates of prominent infrared-bright cloud features on Neptune between 2018 and 2021. These features had lifespans of ~ 1 day to ≥ 1 month and were located at mid-latitudes and near the south pole. Our observations permitted determination of drift rates via feature tracking. These drift rates were compared to three zonal wind profiles describing Neptune's atmosphere determined from features tracked in H band (1.6 µm), K' band (2.1 µm), and Voyager 2 data at visible wavelengths. Features near -70 deg measured in the F845M filter (845 nm) were particularly consistent with the K' wind profile. The southern mid-latitudes hosted multiple features whose lifespans were ≥ 1 month, providing evidence that these latitudes are a region of high stability in Neptune's atmosphere. We also used HST F467M (467 nm) data to analyze a dark, circumpolar wave ... : © 2023 Elsevier Inc. Thank you to the two anonymous referees whose comments helped improve the manuscript tremendously. This work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, NSF Grant AST-1615004 to UC Berkeley. Many of the images were obtained with the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation, United States. The authors wish to recognize and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Maunakea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain. We further made use of data obtained with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained from the data archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute. This work used data ...