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Mining Old Data From NASA’s Voyager 2 Solves Several Uranus Mysteries
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By NASA
2 min read
Citizen Scientists Use NASA Open Science Data to Research Life in Space
2023 Workshop of Analysis Working Group members, Washington, D.C., November 14, 2023. Now, you are invited to join their quest to understand how life can thrive in deep space! Want to learn more first? Join our live virtual event April 17 at 3pm Eastern Time to hear an overview of the OSDR AWG’s operations. Photo: NASA OSDR Team How can life thrive in deep space? The Open Science Data Repository Analysis Working Groups invite volunteers from all backgrounds to help answer this question. Request to join these citizen science groups to help investigate how life adapts to space environments, exploring topics like radiation effects, microgravity’s impact on human and plant health, and how microbes change in orbit.
Currently, nine Analysis Working Groups (AWGs) hold monthly meetings to advance their specific focus areas. Participants collaborate using an online platform, the AWG “Forum-Space”, where they connect with peers and experts, join discussions, and contribute to over 20 active projects.
The AWGs work with data primarily from the NASA Open Science Data Repository (OSDR), a treasure trove of spaceflight data on physiology, molecular biology, bioimaging, and much more. For newcomers, there are tutorials and a comprehensive paper covering all aspects of the repository and the AWG community. You can explore 500+ studies, an omics multi-study visualization portal, the environmental data app, and RadLab, a portal for radiation telemetry data. (“Omics” refers to fields of biology that end in “omics,” like “genomics”.)
Each of the nine AWGs has a Lead who organizes their group and holds monthly virtual meetings. Once you join, make sure to connect with the Lead and get on the agenda so you can introduce yourself. Learn more about the AWGs here.
Have an idea for a new project? Propose a new project and help lead it! From data analysis and visualization to shaping data standards and conducting literature meta-analyses, there’s a place for everyone to contribute. Request to join, and together, we can address a great challenge for humanity: understanding and enabling life to thrive in deep space!
Want to learn more?
On April 17 at 3pm Eastern Time, the NASA Citizen Science Leaders Series is hosting an virtual event with Ryan Scott about these Analysis Working Groups and their work. Ryan is the Science Lead for the Ames Life Sciences Data Archive and the liaison between the Open Data Science Repository and the Analysis Working Groups. Click here to register for this event!
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Last Updated Apr 01, 2025 Related Terms
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By NASA
Explore Hubble Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts e-Books Online Activities Lithographs Fact Sheets Posters Hubble on the NASA App Glossary More 35th Anniversary Online Activities 5 Min Read 20-Year Hubble Study of Uranus Yields New Atmospheric Insights
The image columns show the change of Uranus for the four years that STIS observed Uranus across a 20-year period. Over that span of time, the researchers watched the seasons of Uranus as the south polar region darkened going into winter shadow while the north polar region brightened as northern summer approaches. Credits:
NASA, ESA, Erich Karkoschka (LPL) The ice-giant planet Uranus, which travels around the Sun tipped on its side, is a weird and mysterious world. Now, in an unprecedented study spanning two decades, researchers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered new insights into the planet’s atmospheric composition and dynamics. This was possible only because of Hubble’s sharp resolution, spectral capabilities, and longevity.
The team’s results will help astronomers to better understand how the atmosphere of Uranus works and responds to changing sunlight. These long-term observations provide valuable data for understanding the atmospheric dynamics of this distant ice giant, which can serve as a proxy for studying exoplanets of similar size and composition.
When Voyager 2 flew past Uranus in 1986, it provided a close-up snapshot of the sideways planet. What it saw resembled a bland, blue-green billiard ball. By comparison, Hubble chronicled a 20-year story of seasonal changes from 2002 to 2022. Over that period, a team led by Erich Karkoschka of the University of Arizona, and Larry Sromovsky and Pat Fry from the University of Wisconsin used the same Hubble instrument, STIS (the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph), to paint an accurate picture of the atmospheric structure of Uranus.
Uranus’ atmosphere is mostly hydrogen and helium, with a small amount of methane and traces of water and ammonia. The methane gives Uranus its cyan color by absorbing the red wavelengths of sunlight.
The Hubble team observed Uranus four times in the 20-year period: in 2002, 2012, 2015, and 2022. They found that, unlike conditions on the gas giants Saturn and Jupiter, methane is not uniformly distributed across Uranus. Instead, it is strongly depleted near the poles. This depletion remained relatively constant over the two decades. However, the aerosol and haze structure changed dramatically, brightening significantly in the northern polar region as the planet approaches its northern summer solstice in 2030.
The image columns show the change of Uranus for the four years that STIS observed Uranus across a 20-year period. Over that span of time, the researchers watched the seasons of Uranus as the south polar region darkened going into winter shadow while the north polar region brightened as northern summer approaches. NASA, ESA, Erich Karkoschka (LPL) Uranus takes a little over 84 Earth years to complete a single orbit of the Sun. So, over two decades, the Hubble team has only seen mostly northern spring as the Sun moves from shining directly over Uranus’ equator toward shining almost directly over its north pole in 2030. Hubble observations suggest complex atmospheric circulation patterns on Uranus during this period. The data that are most sensitive to the methane distribution indicate a downwelling in the polar regions and upwelling in other regions.
The team analyzed their results in several ways. The image columns show the change of Uranus for the four years that STIS observed Uranus across a 20-year period. Over that span of time, the researchers watched the seasons of Uranus as the south polar region (left) darkened going into winter shadow while the north polar region (right) brightened as it began to come into a more direct view as northern summer approaches.
The top row, in visible light, shows how the color of Uranus appears to the human eye as seen through even an amateur telescope.
In the second row, the false-color image of the planet is assembled from visible and near-infrared light observations. The color and brightness correspond to the amounts of methane and aerosols. Both of these quantities could not be distinguished before Hubble’s STIS was first aimed at Uranus in 2002. Generally, green areas indicate less methane than blue areas, and red areas show no methane. The red areas are at the limb, where the stratosphere of Uranus is almost completely devoid of methane.
The two bottom rows show the latitude structure of aerosols and methane inferred from 1,000 different wavelengths (colors) from visible to near infrared. In the third row, bright areas indicate cloudier conditions, while the dark areas represent clearer conditions. In the fourth row, bright areas indicate depleted methane, while dark areas show the full amount of methane.
At middle and low latitudes, aerosols and methane depletion have their own latitudinal structure that mostly did not change much over the two decades of observation. However, in the polar regions, aerosols and methane depletion behave very differently.
In the third row, the aerosols near the north pole display a dramatic increase, showing up as very dark during early northern spring, turning very bright in recent years. Aerosols also seem to disappear at the left limb as the solar radiation disappeared. This is evidence that solar radiation changes the aerosol haze in the atmosphere of Uranus. On the other hand, methane depletion seems to stay quite high in both polar regions throughout the observing period.
Astronomers will continue to observe Uranus as the planet approaches northern summer.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
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20 Years of Uranus Observations
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Last Updated Mar 31, 2025 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Contact Media Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
Ann Jenkins
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland
Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland
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By European Space Agency
On 19 March 2025, the European Space Agency’s Euclid mission released its first batch of survey data, including a preview of its deep fields. Here, hundreds of thousands of galaxies in different shapes and sizes take centre stage and show a glimpse of their large-scale organisation in the cosmic web.
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By NASA
4 min read
NASA Atmospheric Wave-Studying Mission Releases Data from First 3,000 Orbits
Following the 3,000th orbit of NASA’s AWE (Atmospheric Waves Experiment) aboard the International Space Station, researchers publicly released the mission’s first trove of scientific data, crucial to investigate how and why subtle changes in Earth’s atmosphere cause disturbances, as well as how these atmospheric disturbances impact technological systems on the ground and in space.
“We’ve released the first 3,000 orbits of data collected by the AWE instrument in space and transmitted back to Earth,” said Ludger Scherliess, principal investigator for the mission and physics professor at Utah State University. “This is a view of atmospheric gravity waves never captured before.”
Available online, the data release contains more than five million individual images of nighttime airglow and atmospheric gravity wave observations collected by the instrument’s four cameras, as well as derived temperature and airglow intensity swaths of the ambient air and the waves.
This image shows AWE data combined from two of the instrument’s passes over the United States. The red and orange wave-structures show increases in brightness (or radiance) in infrared light produced by airglow in Earth’s atmosphere. NASA/AWE/Ludger Scherliess “AWE is providing incredible images and data to further understand what we only first observed less than a decade ago,” said Esayas Shume, AWE program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “We are thrilled to share this influential data set with the larger scientific community and look forward to what will be discovered.”
Members of the AWE science team gather in the mission control room at Utah State University to view data collected by the mapping instrument mounted on the outside of the International Space Station. SDL/Allison Bills Atmospheric gravity waves occur naturally in Earth’s atmosphere and are formed by Earth’s weather and topography. Scientists have studied the enigmatic phenomena for years, but mainly from a few select sites on Earth’s surface.
“With data from AWE, we can now begin near-global measurements and studies of the waves and their energy and momentum on scales from tens to hundreds and even thousands of kilometers,” Scherliess said. “This opens a whole new chapter in this field of research.”
Data from AWE will also provide insight into how terrestrial and space weather interactions affect satellite communications, and navigation, and tracking.
“We’ve become very dependent on satellites for applications we use every day, including GPS navigation,” Scherliess said. “AWE is an attempt to bring science about atmospheric gravity waves into focus, and to use that information to better predict space weather that can disrupt satellite communications. We will work closely with our collaborators to better understand how these observed gravity waves impact space weather.”
AWE’s principal investigator, Ludger Scherliess, briefs collaborators of initial analysis of early AWE data. Information from the NASA-funded mission is helping scientists better understand how weather on Earth affects weather in space. SDL/Allison Bills The tuba-shaped AWE instrument, known as the Advanced Mesospheric Temperature Mapper or AMTM, consists of four identical telescopes. It is mounted to the exterior of the International Space Station, where it has a view of Earth.
As the space station orbits Earth, the AMTM’s telescopes capture 7,000-mile-long swaths of the planet’s surface, recording images of atmospheric gravity waves as they move from the lower atmosphere into space. The AMTM measures and records the brightness of light at specific wavelengths, which can be used to create air and wave temperature maps. These maps can reveal the energy of these waves and how they are moving through the atmosphere.
To analyze the data and make it publicly available, AWE researchers and students at USU developed new software to tackle challenges that had never been encountered before.
“Reflections from clouds and the ground can obscure some of the images, and we want to make sure the data provide clear, precise images of the power transported by the waves,” Scherliess said. “We also need to make sure the images coming from the four separate AWE telescopes on the mapper are aligned correctly. Further, we need to ensure stray light reflections coming off the solar panels of the space station, along with moonlight and city lights, are not masking the observations.”
As the scientists move forward with the mission, they’ll investigate how gravity wave activity changes with seasons around the globe. Scherliess looks forward to seeing how the global science community will use the AWE observations.
“Data collected through this mission provides unprecedented insight into the role of weather on the ground on space weather,” he said.
AWE is led by Utah State University in Logan, Utah, and it is managed by the Explorers Program Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Utah State University’s Space Dynamics Laboratory built the AWE instrument and provides the mission operations center.
By Mary-Ann Muffoletto
Utah State University, Logan, UT
NASA Media Contact: Sarah Frazier
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Last Updated Mar 14, 2025 Related Terms
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