Related papers: Planetary Bow Shocks
Stellar bow shocks, bow waves, and dust waves all result from the action of a star's wind and radiation pressure on a stream of dusty plasma that flows past it. The dust in these bows emits prominently at mid-infrared wavelengths in the…
Pulsars have mean space velocities >~500 km/s. The consequent ram pressure results in tight confinement of the star's energetic wind, driving a bow shock into the surrounding medium. Pulsar bow shocks have long been regarded as a curiosity,…
Planetary rings are the only nearby astrophysical disks, and the only disks that have been investigated by spacecraft. Although there are significant differences between rings and other disks, chiefly the large planet/ring mass ratio that…
Collisionless shocks and plasma turbulence are crucial ingredients for a broad range of astrophysical systems. The shock-turbulence interaction, and in particular the transmission of fully developed turbulence across the quasi-perpendicular…
Identifying blast-wave shocks, which can arise during CME formation, is a much more complex problem. The difference from piston shocks is that a blast-wave shock originates from the explosions that frequently accompany CME formation, and…
Massive runaway stars produce bow shocks through the interaction of their winds with the interstellar medium, with the prospect for particle acceleration by the shocks. These objects are consequently candidates for non-thermal emission. Our…
Magnetic interactions between a planet and its environment are known to lead to aurorae and shocks in the solar system. The large number of close-in exoplanets that have been discovered so far triggered a renewed interest in understanding…
We study the hydrodynamical behavior occurring in the turbulent interaction zone of a fast moving red supergiant star, where the circumstellar and interstellar material collide. In this wind-interstellar medium collision, the familiar bow…
Stellar activity has a particularly strong influence on planets at small orbital distances, such as close-in exoplanets. For such planets, we present two extreme cases of stellar variability, namely stellar coronal mass ejections and…
After 9 years in the Saturn system, the Cassini spacecraft finally observed Titan in the supersonic solar wind. These unique observations reveal that Titan interaction with the solar wind is in many ways similar to un-magnetized planets…
We present new wind models for {\tau} Bo\"otis ({\tau} Boo), a hot-Jupiter-host-star whose observable magnetic cycles makes it a uniquely useful target for our goal of monitoring the temporal variability of stellar winds and their…
A planetary mass scale and a system of composition codes are presented for describing the geophysical characteristics of exoplanets and Solar System planets, dwarf planets, and spherical moons. The composition classes characterize the rock,…
All of the solar system gas giants produce electron cyclotron masers, driven by the solar wind impinging on their magnetospheres. Extrapolating to the planet orbiting tau Boo, various authors have predicted that it may be within the…
While it may seem counterintuitive that X-ray astronomy should give any insights into low-temperature planetary systems, planets orbit stars whose magnetized surfaces divert a small fraction of the stellar energy into high energy products:…
The Earth's comparatively massive moon, formed via a giant impact on the proto-Earth, has played an important role in the development of life on our planet, both in the history and strength of the ocean tides and in stabilizing the chaotic…
Studying the magnetic fields of exoplanets will provide valuable information about their interior structures, atmospheric properties (escape and dynamics), and potential habitability. One of the most promising methods to detect exoplanetary…
This review presents an insight into our current knowledge of the atmospheres of the planets Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, the satellite Titan, and those of exoplanets. It deals with the thermal structure, aerosol…
Previous studies have shown that extrasolar Earth-like planets in close-in habitable zones around M-stars are weakly protected against galactic cosmic rays (GCRs), leading to a strongly increased particle flux to the top of the planetary…
We present fast algorithms to automatically estimate the statistical position of the bow shock from spacecraft data, using existing analytical two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) models of the shock surface. We derive…
Over the past several decades, thousands of planets have been discovered outside of our Solar System. These planets exhibit enormous diversity, and their large numbers provide a statistical opportunity to place our Solar System within the…