PASADENA, Calif. New adaptive optics on the Keck 2 telescope in Hawaii have allowed astronomers to capture new images of the solar system's seventh and eighth planets, showing the dark rings that encircle Uranus and the richness of Neptunes atmosphere.

The Neptune image shows the planet has an atmosphere dense with dynamic features, including vortices, waves and bands of clouds much like those in Jupiters atmosphere.

"We've never seen the detail we see now," said Imke de Pater, a professor of astronomy and of Earth and planetary science at the University of California, Berkeley. "This shows us how much structure there is in the planet's atmosphere, how dynamic it is as dynamic as Jupiter."

Neptunes atmosphere shows signs of transient storms and wind speeds reaching 1,300 feet (400 meters) a second at the equator, or 30 times the wind speeds on Jupiter. The team has yet to explain most of the features, such as what causes the brightest storms, why wind speeds are so high on Neptune and what source of energy drives the planets weather.

The team, which included astronomers from Berkeley; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Caltech and the University of California at Los Angeles also presented a new near-infrared image of Uranus. The image marks the first ground-based detection of the faint, but dark and chunky, rings that encircle the planet.

The imaging campaign also allowed astronomers to pick out numerous small cloud features well above, in altitude, the south polar methane haze layer on Uranus.

The team formally presented the images at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Societys Division for Planetary Sciences in Pasadena, California.

The new adaptive optics system on the W.M. Keck 2 Telescope atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii allows astronomers to correct for atmospheric turbulence that can cause blurring.