The two faces of Uranus as seen through the adaptive optics on the near-infrared camera of the Keck II telescope in Hawaii. Credit: Lawrence Sromovsky, Pat Fry, Heidi Hammel, Imke de Pater.
The two faces of Uranus as seen through the adaptive optics on the near-infrared camera of the Keck II telescope in Hawaii. The white features are high altitude clouds like Earth’s cumulus clouds, while the bright blue-green features are thinner high-altitude clouds akin to cirrus clouds. Reddish tints indicate deeper cloud layers. In each image, the north pole is at the right and is highlighted by small convective spots highly reminiscent of features seen on Saturn’s pole. Just south of the equator is a never-before-seen scalloped wave pattern similar to instabilities that develop in regions of horizontal wind shear. Image courtesy of Lawrence Sromovsky, Pat Fry, Heidi Hammel, Imke de Pater.