Related papers: Activity in the lunar surface: Transient Lunar Phe…
How often do bright optical transients occur on the sky but go unreported? To constrain the bright end of the astronomical transient function, a systematic search for transients that become bright enough to be noticed by the unaided eye was…
The frequently discovered flooding structure on Mars and other planets has long been an intriguing mystery remained un-disclosed so far. Considering that on Earth, quite a few low melting point liquid metals or their alloy can be candidates…
(abridged) Some difficulties in determining the physical properties that lead to observed anomalies in microlensing light curves, such as the mass and separation of extra-solar planets orbiting the lens star, or the relative source-lens…
We investigate the properties of microlensing events caused by planetary systems where planets with a moon are widely separated from their host stars. From this investigation, we find that the moon feature generally appears as an very…
Sprites are a spectacular type of transient luminous events (TLE) which occur above thunderstorms immediately after lightning. They have shapes of giant jellyfish, carrots or columns and last tens of milliseconds. In Earth's atmosphere,…
Observations of very low-mass stars with Kepler represent an excellent opportunity to search for planetary transits and to characterize optical photometric variability at the cool end of the stellar mass distribution. In this paper, we…
Aims. Particles ejected from the lunar surface via hypervelocity impacts form a torus between the Earth and the Moon. According to our previous study (Yang et al., A\&A, 659, A120), among them about $2.3\times10^{-4}\,\mathrm{kg/s}$…
It is shown that the appearance of lunar horizon glow and streamers observed above the lunar terminator described by the dynamic fountain mode byl Stubbs et al. (2006) requires a value of dust particles charge several orders exceed what…
Multiple nations are planning activity on the Moon's surface, and to deconflict lunar operations we must understand the sandblasting damage from rocket exhaust blowing soil. Prior research disagreed over the scaling of the erosion rate,…
The duration-luminosity phase space of optical transients is used, mostly heuristically, to compare various classes of transient events, to explore the origin of new transients, and to influence optical survey observing strategies. For…
The perturbation caused by planet-moon binarity on the time-of-arrival signal of a pulsar with an orbiting planet is derived for the case in which the orbits of the moon and the planet-moon barycenter are both circular and coplanar. The…
The discovery that the Galactic centre emits flares at various wavelengths represents a puzzle concerning their origin, but at the same time it is a relevant opportunity to investigate the environment of the nearest super-massive black…
Like many airless planetary surfaces, the surface of the Moon is scattered by populations of blocks and smaller boulders. These features decrease in abundance with increasing exposure time due to comminution by impact bombardment and…
The physical state of the lunar soil in the permanently shadowed craters of the moon is inferred from experimental investigation. The permanently shadowed craters do not undergo the same thermal cycling experienced by other parts of the…
An exomoon on a non perfectly circular orbit experiences tidal heating that is capable to significantly contribute to the thermal brightness of the moon. Here we argue that the thermal heat is unevenly distributed on the moon's surface, the…
The Curiosity rover recently detected a background of 0.7 ppb and spikes of 7 ppb of methane on Mars. This in situ measurement reorients our understanding of the Martian environment and its potential for life, as the current theories do not…
Multiple impact basins formed on the Moon about 3.8 Gyr ago in what is known as the lunar cataclysm or late heavy bombardment. Many workers currently interpret the lunar cataclysm as an impact spike primarily caused by main-belt asteroids…
Gravitational microlensing is a powerful method for detecting and characterizing free-floating planetary-mass objects (FFPs). FFPs could have exomoons rotating them. In this work, we study the probability of realizing these systems (i.e.,…
Impact flashes on the moon are caused by high-speed collisions of celestial bodies with the lunar surface. The study of the impacts is critical for exploring the evolutionary history and formation of the Moon, and for quantifying the risk…
The observed presence of water molecules in the dayside lunar regolith was an unexpected discovery and remains poorly understood. Standard thermophysical models predict temperatures that are too high for adsorbed water to be stable. We…