Related papers: Thermally driven escape from Pluto's atmosphere: A…

Predicting the rate of escape and thermal structure of Pluto's upper atmosphere in preparation for the New Horizons Spacecraft encounter in 2015 is important for planning and interpreting the expected measurements. Having a moderate Jeans…

Accurately determining escape rates from a planet's atmosphere is critical for determining its evolution. Escape can be driven by upward thermal conduction of energy deposited well below the exobase, as well as by non-thermal processes…

Thermally-driven atmospheric escape evolves from an organized outflow (hydrodynamic escape) to escape on a molecule by molecules basis (Jeans escape) with increasing Jeans parameter, the ratio of the gravitational to thermal energy of…

The equations of gas dynamics are extensively used to describe atmospheric loss from solar system bodies and exoplanets even though the boundary conditions at infinity are not uniquely defined. Using molecular-kinetic simulations that…

We adapted a multi-species escape model, developed for close-in extrasolar planets, to calculate the escape rates of CH4 and N2 from Pluto. In the absence of escape, CH4 should overtake N2 as the dominant species below the exobase. The CH4…

The extra-solar planet HD209458b has been found to have an extended atmosphere of escaping atomic hydrogen (Vidal-Madjar et al. 2003), suggesting that ``hot Jupiters'' closer to their parent stars could evaporate. Here we estimate the…

Results are presented from a 3-D Pluto general circulation model (GCM) that includes conductive heating and cooling, non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (non-LTE) heating by methane at 2.3 and 3.3 microns, non-LTE cooling by cooling by…

A multi-fluid model for an atomic hydrogen-proton mixture in the upper atmosphere of extrosolar planet is presented when the continuity and momentum equations of each component have been already solved with an energy equation. The particle…

In the present series of papers we propose a consistent description of the mass loss process. To study the effects of intrinsic magnetic field of a close-orbit giant exoplanet (so-called Hot Jupiter) on the atmospheric material escape and…

Observations indicate that some of the largest Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) have retained volatiles in the gas phase, which implies the presence of an atmosphere that can affect their reflectance spectra and thermal balance. Volatile escape…

The bolometric radiation from a central body is potentially a powerful driver of atmospheric escape from planets or satellites. When heated above their equilibrium temperatures those satellites, due to their low surface gravity, are be…

There is growing observational and theoretical evidence suggesting that atmospheric escape is a key driver of planetary evolution. Commonly, planetary evolution models employ simple analytic formulae (e.g., energy limited escape) that are…

Exoplanets with substantial Hydrogen/Helium atmospheres have been discovered in abundance, many residing extremely close to their parent stars. The extreme irradiation levels these atmospheres experience causes them to undergo hydrodynamic…

N2 is abundant in Pluto's atmosphere and on its surface, but the supply is depleted by prodigious atmospheric escape. We demonstrate that cometary impacts could not have delivered enough N mass to resupply Pluto's N2 atmospheric escape over…

Escape of an early atmosphere from Titan, during which time NH3 could be converted by photolysis into the present N2 dominated atmosphere, is an important problem in planetary science. Recently Gilliam and Lerman (2014) estimated escape…

The Alice instrument on NASA's New Horizons spacecraft observed an ultraviolet solar occultation by Pluto's atmosphere on 2015 July 14. The transmission vs. altitude was sensitive to the presence of N2, CH4, C2H2, C2H4, C2H6, and haze. We…

The long-term retention of substantial atmospheres in close-in exoplanets presents a major challenge to classical hydrodynamic escape theory, which predicts rapid mass loss under intense stellar irradiation. In this work, we propose a fully…

Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) driven atmospheric escape is a key process in the atmospheric evolution of close-in exoplanets. In many evolutionary models, the energy-limited mass-loss rate with a constant efficiency (typically $\sim10\%$) is…

Modeling the outflow of planetary atmospheres is important for understanding the evolution of exoplanet systems and for interpreting their observations. Modern theoretical models of exoplanet atmospheres become increasingly detailed and…

By considering martian-like planetary embryos inside the habitable zone of solar-like stars we study the behavior of the hydrodynamic atmospheric escape of hydrogen for small values of the Jeans escape parameter $\beta < 3$, near the base…