English
Related papers

Related papers: Overview of Saturn lightning observations

200 papers

Saturn's E ring consists of micron-sized particles launched from Enceladus by that moon's geological activity. A variety of small-scale structures in the E-ring's brightness have been attributed to tendrils of material recently launched…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2021-07-20 M. M. Hedman , M. Young

The high precision of the latest version of the planetary ephemeris EPM2011 enables one to explore more accurately a variety of small effects in the solar system. The processing of about 678 thousand of position observations of planets and…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2013-06-14 E. V. Pitjeva , N. P. Pitjev

The spokes observed in Saturn's rings have been a subject of scientific debate since their discovery by Stephen J. O'Meara in the 1970s and their confirmation by the Voyager flybys in the early 1980s (Smith et al., 1982). While the Cassini…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2026-05-12 Fenton John Doolan

The Saturnian Kilometric Radiation (SKR) is radiated from the auroral regions surrounding the kronian magnetic poles, above the ionosphere up to a few planetary radii. It directly compares to the auroral radio emissions emanating from other…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2018-09-26 Laurent Lamy

The details of the Solar system's formation are still heavily debated. Questions remain about the formation locations of the giant planets, and the degree to which volatile material was mixed throughout the proto-planetary system. One…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2013-02-20 Lucyna Kedziora-Chudczer , Jeremy Bailey , Jonathan Horner

The spatial distribution of the tropospheric methane on Titan was measured using near-infrared spectroscopy. Ground-based observations at 1.5$\mu{\rm m}$ (H-band) were performed during the same night using instruments with adaptive optics…

The Cassini spacecraft provided key measurements during its more than twelve year mission that constrain the absolute age of Saturn's rings. These include the extrinsic micrometeoroid flux at Saturn, the volume fraction of non-icy…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2023-05-24 Paul R. Estrada , Richard. H. Durisen

We carried out observations, with five different instruments ranging in aperture from 0.4m to 10m, of the satellites of Uranus during that planet's 2007 Equinox. Our observations covered specific intervals of time when mutual eclipses and…

The abundance of deuterium in giant planet atmospheres provides constraints on the reservoirs of ices incorporated into these worlds during their formation and evolution. Motivated by discrepancies in the measured deuterium-hydrogen ratio…

The origin of carbon monoxide (CO) in Saturn's stratosphere remains uncertain, with proposed sources including internal thermochemical production, cometary impacts, and exogenic material from the rings and icy moons (i.e. Enceladus). We aim…

Up to date, only 13 firmly established triple microlensing events have been discovered, so the occurrence rates of microlensing two-planet systems and planets in binary systems are still uncertain. With the upcoming space-based microlensing…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2023-02-22 Renkun Kuang , Weicheng Zang , Shude Mao , Jiyuan Zhang , Haochang Jiang

Solid state CO$_2$ has been detected throughout the outer solar system, even at temperatures where crystalline CO$_2$ is unstable, requiring that the CO$_2$ be trapped in a separate host material. The Saturnian satellites provide an ideal…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2025-06-26 Michael E. Brown , Samantha K. Trumbo , Matthew Belyakov , M. Ryleigh Davis , Ashma Pandaya

In a previous paper (Hedman and Nicholson 2013), we developed tools that allowed us to confirm that several of the waves in Saturn's rings were likely generated by resonances with fundamental sectoral normal modes inside Saturn itself. Here…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-22 M. M. Hedman , P. D. Nicholson

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…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2023-12-12 Agustín Sánchez-Lavega , Patrick Irwin , Antonio García Muñoz

Saturn's largest satellite, Titan, has a thick atmosphere dominated by nitrogen and methane. The dense orange-brown smog hiding the satellite's surface is produced by photochemical reactions of methane, nitrogen and their dissociation…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Olivier Mousis , Bernard Schmitt

We present results from large-scale particle simulations of the viscous overstability in Saturn's rings. The overstability generates a variety of structure on scales covering a few hundred metres to several kilometres, including…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-11 Hanno Rein , Henrik Latter

Images obtained by the Cassini spacecraft between 2012 and 2015 reveal a periodic brightness variation in a region of Saturn's D ring that previously appeared to be rather featureless. Furthermore, the intensity and radial wavenumber of…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2016-08-31 M. M. Hedman , M. R. Showalter

Saturn's axial tilt produces seasons in a similar way as on Earth. Both the stratospheric temperature and composition are affected by this latitudinally varying insolation along the seasons. The thermal structure is controlled and regulated…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2016-02-17 V. Hue , T. K. Greathouse , T. Cavalié , M. Dobrijevic , F. Hersant

Radio occultations of Saturn's main rings by spacecraft suggest a power law particle size-distribution down to sizes of the order of 1 cm (Marouf et al., 1983), (Zebker et al., 1985). The lack of optical depth variations between ultraviolet…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2013-12-11 Rebecca A. Harbison , Philip D. Nicholson , Matthew M. Hedman