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to observe with hubble we actually have

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to plan out pretty far in advance and

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for the outer planets what we do is we

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pick the time when they're at opposition

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and that means that it's opposite from

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the sun from the earth's point of view

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and that basically gives us the highest

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resolution view that's when hubble is

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the closest to each planet even though

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that doesn't vary much over a year and

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the planets are a little bit more

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challenging because they move and so

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hubble has to find guide stars first

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that tell it where it's pointing in the

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sky but then it has to track those

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planets so it has to move following the

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planet across the sky and so that has to

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be interleaved with all the other

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science program hubble's doing every

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single day and so it's very carefully

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coordinated to fit in as hubble then

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orbits around the earth and so it gets

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planned out down to the minutes of

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exactly which image we're going to take

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in which filter for each of those

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so it's a cosmic dance of getting hubble

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pointed in the right place moving in the

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right direction and tracking all at the

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[Applause]

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the opal project or the outer planet's

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atmosphere's legacy program is an

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observational program using the hubble

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space telescope and what we're doing is

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we're looking at each of the outer

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planets every year so that we can build

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up a time base using the exact same

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facility and the same instruments so we

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can actually track what's changing over

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it started really with jupiter

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in essence we were trying to look at the

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weather on jupiter

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and as we're trying to understand

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whether we know even here on earth it

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changes every minute every hour every

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day

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and we didn't have that kind of time

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coverage but we also didn't even have

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long time coverage to look at things

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that changed over seasons and so we had

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this big gap in our knowledge where we

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just weren't getting frequent enough

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data to be able to trend any of these

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things and the idea kind of came about

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to look at a legacy program where we

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built up a legacy for hubble within the

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planetary community and in 2014 we

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started with our first observations of

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uranus

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and the first thing i think we noticed

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was uranus had a very prominent polar

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cap it was very much brighter and

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getting brighter over time we've watched

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it over the last few years get much

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brighter

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neptune on the other hand has been

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really quite interesting the first thing

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we noted was it had a lot of bright

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white clouds and they were coming and

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going pretty rapidly at a lot of

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different latitudes

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[Music]

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and so when we start looking at neptune

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and uranus as dynamic planets with

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changing atmospheres weather like we

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know now for jupiter and saturn

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we realize that we have a lot of gaps in

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and so we've been able to use the opel

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program to track how much cloud cover we

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have from year to year but the other

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thing we can do with hubble that we

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can't really do any other way is look

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for dark spots

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and so the great dark spot was this big

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iconic feature we saw with voyager and

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when we looked again a few years later

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finally when hubble was online it was

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gone

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and that kind of surprised us because we

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were used to the great red spot which

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doesn't go away it's changed over time

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but it's still there

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[Music]

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and so these storms are not quite the

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same as what we see on jupiter because

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they form and go away on much more rapid

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time scales

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the latest image of neptune is really

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interesting to me because we don't see

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those bright weight clouds we've been

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seeing the last few years as a matter of

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fact the only thing we see in that

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particular image is this great dark spot

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and so in a lot of ways it brings us

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around full circle because this looks so

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much like the voyager image from 1989

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and that was pretty surprising to me not

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to see as much cloud activity as we've

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been seeing in previous years

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the opal team's actually a fairly small

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team there's only three of us but our

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data is immediately available to the

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public and any other scientist that

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wants to use them and so we do that as

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well as our own scientific analysis

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i think having so much hubble data now

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there's just so much in there to study

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and you know as a scientist that's what

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drives us is trying to solve mysteries

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trying to look for new mysteries and so

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having these long-term data sets with

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just such rich numbers of features in

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there there's always something to go

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look at and it's certainly going to keep

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us busy for years to come even when