Don Savage
Headquarters, Washington, DC                October 23, 1996
(Phone:  202/358-1547)

Tammy Jones
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
(Phone:  301/286-5566)

Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD
(Phone:  410/338-4514)

Terry Devitt
University of Wisconsin-Madison
(Phone:  608/262-8282)

NOTE TO EDITORS:  N96-71

HUBBLE MAKES MOVIE OF NEPTUNE'S ROTATION AND WEATHER

       NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has been used to
assemble a time-lapse color movie showing a full 16-hour
rotation of the distant planet, Neptune.  The movie, made
from a series of Hubble observations over nine consecutive
orbits, allows astronomers to track cloud motion on the
planet.  The clear images show Neptune's powerful equatorial
jet stream, immense storms, and dark spot in Neptune's
northern hemisphere, first identified last year by a
Massachusetts Institute of Technology team using Hubble.

       The movie was made by a team of scientists led by
Lawrence Sromovsky of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's
Space Science and Engineering Center and were presented at
the annual meeting of the Division of Planetary Sciences of
the American Astronomical Society, in Tuscon AZ.  The team
combined observations from Hubble and NASA's Infrared
Telescope Facility (IRTF) on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, to observe
the distant planet in a variety of wavelengths, each
providing a different set of information about Neptune's
clouds, their structure, and how they circulate.  Scientists
can make more precise calculations of Neptune's wind speeds
and directions, yielding refined information about the
planet's dynamic weather system.

       In addition to the movie, a still image is available
to news media representatives by calling the Headquarters
Imaging Branch on 202/358-1900.  Photo numbers are:

   Color:  96-HC-692                     B&W:  96-H-692

       Image files in GIF and JPEG format and captions may be
accessed on Internet via anonymous ftp from ftp.stsci.edu in
/pubinfo.
                                 GIF                   JPEG
PRC96-33  Neptune          gif/nept96.gif        jpeg/nept96.jpg

       Higher resolution digital versions (300 dpi JPEG) of
the release photograph are available in /pubinfo/hrtemp:

96-33.jpg (color) and 96-33bw.jpg (black/white).

GIF and JPEG images, captions and press release text are
available via the World Wide Web at:

http://www.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/96/33.html and via links in:
http://www.stsci.edu/pubinfo/Latest.html or
http://www.stsci.edu/pubinfo/Pictures.html.

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