Related papers: Overview of Saturn lightning observations
Seismology applied to giant planets could drastically change our understanding of their deep interiors, as it has happened with the Earth, the Sun, and many main-sequence and evolved stars. The study of giant planets' composition is…
We present the results of the two most recent (2005) XMM-Newton observations of Saturn together with the re-analysis of an earlier (2002) observation from the XMM-Newton archive and of three Chandra observations in 2003 and 2004. While the…
We present astrometric observations of the Saturnian satellites Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione and Rhea from Cassini Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) narrow-angle camera (NAC) images. Image sequences were designed to observe mutual…
Nowadays, astronomers want to observe gaps in exozodiacal disks to confirm the presence of exoplanets, or even make actual images of these companions. Four hundred and fifty years ago, Jean-Dominique Cassini did a similar study on a closer…
Observations of Uranus were made on the 8/9th November with HST/WFC3 at a time when a huge cloud complex was present at 30 - 40N. We imaged Uranus in seven filters spanning 467 - 924 nm, and analysed these observations with the NEMESIS…
Cassini spacecraft observations of Saturn in 2006 revealed south polar cloud shadows, the common interpretation of which was initiated by Dyudina et al. (2008, Science 319, 1801) who suggested they were being cast by concentric cloud walls,…
We present evidence for condensed phase methane precipitation near Xanadu using nine nights of observations from the SINFONI integral-field spectrograph at the Very Large Telescope and imaging analysis with empirical surface subtraction.…
Image photometry reveals that the F ring is approximately twice as bright during the Cassini tour as it was during the Voyager flybys of 1980 and 1981. It is also three times as wide and has a higher integrated optical depth. We have…
Saturn's rings act as a system of innumerable test particles that are remarkably sensitive to periodic disturbances in the planet's gravitational field. We identify 15 additional density and bending waves in Saturn's C ring driven by the…
Titan, with its thick, nitrogen-dominated atmosphere, has been seen from satellite and terrestrial observations to harbour methane clouds. To investigate whether atmospheric features such as clouds could also be visible from the surface of…
The planetary ephemeris is an essential tool for interplanetary spacecraft navigation, studies of solar system dynamics (including, for example, barycenter corrections for pulsar timing ephemeredes), the prediction of occultations, and…
Whistler-mode waves are generated within and can propagate upstream of collisionless shocks. They are known to play a role in electron thermodynamics/acceleration and, under certain conditions, are markedly observed as wave trains preceding…
Saturn's Great Storm of 2010-2011 has produced two stratospheric hot spots, the "beacons," that eventually merged to produce a gigantic one in April and May 2011. This beacon perturbed stratospheric temperatures, hydrocarbon, and water…
We present two unusual observations of Saturn recorded during the early years of the twentieth century
Simulations of Titan's atmospheric transmission and surface reflectivity have been developed in order to estimate how Titan's atmosphere and surface properties could affect performances of the Cassini radar experiment. In this paper we…
The weather layers of the gas giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn, comprise the shallow atmospheric layers that are influenced energetically by a combination of incoming solar radiation and localised latent heating of condensates, as well as…
A self-consistent two-dimensional model is proposed to account for the transient mesospheric nighttime optical emissions associated to possible intra-cloud (IC) lightning occurring in the Venusian troposphere. The model calculates the…
Planetary ephemerides have been developed and improved over centuries. They are a fundamental tool for understanding solar system dynamics, and essential for planetary and small body mass determinations, occultation predictions,…
With more than 15 years since the the first radial velocity discovery of a planet orbiting a Sun-like star, the time baseline for radial velocity surveys is now extending out beyond the orbit of Jupiter analogs. The sensitivity to exoplanet…
Telescope and detector developments continuously enable deeper and more detailed studies of astronomical objects. Larger collecting areas, improvement in dispersion and detector techniques, and higher sensitivities allow detection of more…