Related papers: Planetary Science Goals for the Spitzer Warm Era
The history of the outer solar system is intrinsically related to the Giant Planets migration. A massive disk of material within a radius of 30~au was scattered during the planetary migration, creating different dynamic populations in the…
Asteroseismology of solar-type stars has an important part to play in the exoplanet program of the NASA Kepler Mission. Precise and accurate inferences on the stellar properties that are made possible by the seismic data allow very tight…
Isotopic ratios provide a powerful tool for understanding the origins of materials, including the volatile and refractory matter within solar system bodies. Recent high sensitivity observations of molecular isotopologues, in particular with…
Measurements in the infrared wavelength domain allow us to assess directly the physical state and energy balance of cool matter in space, thus enabling the detailed study of the various processes that govern the formation and early…
It takes years of effort employing the best telescopes and instruments to obtain high-quality stellar photometry, astrometry, and spectroscopy. Stellar evolution models contain the experience of lifetimes of theoretical calculations and…
Among the most fascinating and hotly-debated areas in contemporary astrophysics are the means by which planetary systems are assembled from the large rotating disks of gas and dust which attend a stellar birth. Although important work has…
Much effort has been invested in recent years, both observationally and theoretically, to understand the interacting processes taking place in planetary systems consisting of a hot Jupiter orbiting its star within 10 stellar radii. Several…
The Planet Formation Imager (PFI) Project is dedicated to defining a next-generation facility that can answer fundamental questions about how planets form, including detection of young giant exoplanets and their circumplanetary disks. The…
Eclipses and pulsations are the two primary ways in which the physical properties of stars can be deduced and used to improve our understanding of stellar theory. An obvious idea is to combine these two analyses into the study of pulsating…
We review the main advances brought by the Spitzer Space Telescope in the field of nearby galaxies studies, concentrating on a few subject areas, including: (1) the physics of the Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons that generate the…
Planet population synthesis models predict an abundance of planets with semi-major axes between 1-10 au, yet they lie at the edge of the detection limits of most planet finding techniques. Discovering these planets and studying their…
Observational surveys for extrasolar planets probe the diverse outcomes of planet formation and evolution. These surveys measure the frequency of planets with different masses, sizes, orbital characteristics, and host star properties. Small…
Small Solar system Objects (SSOs) preserve the physical, chemical, and dynamical signatures of the Sun's protoplanetary disk. Upcoming surveys will discover vast numbers of new objects, yet their scientific value will depend on follow-up…
The search for habitable exoplanets and life beyond the Solar System is one of the most compelling scientific opportunities of our time. Nevertheless, the high cost of building facilities that can address this topic and the keen public…
We propose an ecliptic Deep Drilling Field that will discover some 10,000~small and faint Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) --- primitive rocky/icy bodies that orbit at the outside of our Solar System and uniquely record the processes of planetary…
The challenge for optical detection of terrestial planet is the 25 magnitude brightness contrast between the planet and its host star. This paper introduces a new pupil design that produces a very dark null along its symmetry axis. By…
We describe a new inquiry design aimed at teaching advanced high-school to senior college students the basics of stellar populations. The inquiry is designed to have students come up with their own version of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram…
Context: Trans-Neptunian objects are distant bodies that retain valuable information about the origin and evolution of the Solar System. Many of these objects constitute binary systems. Studying binaries allows us to further characterise…
The Spitzer Space Telescope operated for over 16 years in an Earth-trailing solar orbit, returning not only a wealth of scientific data but, as a by-product, spacecraft and instrument engineering data which will be of interest to future…
The understanding of the formation and evolution of the solar system still has many unanswered questions. Formation of solids in the solar system, mineral and organic mixing, and planetary body creation are all topics of interest to the…