Related papers: Internal structure of Pluto and Charon with an iro…

The accretion of a terrestrial body and differentiation of its silicate/oxide mantle from iron core provide abundant energy for heating its interior to temperatures much higher than the present day Earth. The consequences of differentiation…

Quantitative data on the solar wind, solar magnetic fields, solar eruptions, solar neutrinos, and on the planetary material orbiting the Sun all indicate the presence of an iron-rich solar interior and a neutron star at the core of the Sun.…

New Horizons observations suggest that CH4 on Pluto has a complex history, involving reservoirs of different composition, thickness and stability controlled by volatile processes occurring on different timescales. In order to interpret…

Uranus and Neptune are commonly considered ice giants, and it is often assumed that, in addition to a solar mix of hydrogen and helium, they contain roughly twice as much water as rock. This classical picture has led to successful models of…

Recent discoveries of water-rich, sub-Neptunian to Neptunian-massed exoplanets with short-period orbits present a new parameter space for the study of exoplanetary dynamos. We explore the geometry of the dynamo source region within this…

Observations made during the New Horizons flyby provide a detailed snapshot of the current state of Pluto's atmosphere. While the lower atmosphere (at altitudes <200 km) is consistent with ground-based stellar occultations, the upper…

Thermal observations of the Pluto-Charon system acquired by the Herschel Space Observatory in February 2012 are presented. They consist of photometric measurements with the PACS and SPIRE instruments (nine visits to the Pluto system each),…

For its beautiful rings, active atmosphere and mysterious magnetic field, Saturn is a fascinating planet. It also holds some of the keys to understanding the formation of our Solar System and the evolution of giant planets in general. While…

We present results from a multi-chord Pluto stellar occultation observed on 29 June 2015 from New Zealand and Australia. This occurred only two weeks before the NASA New Horizons flyby of the Pluto system and serves as a useful comparison…

Ice naturally forms in the disordered or ``amorphous'' state when accreted from vapor at temperatures and pressures found in the interstellar medium and in the frigid, low density outer regions of the Sun's protoplanetary disk. It is…

The goal of this chapter is to review hypotheses for the origin of the Pluto system in light of observational constraints that have been considerably refined over the 85-year interval between the discovery of Pluto and its exploration by…

The planet Mercury possesses an anomalously large iron core, and a correspondingly high bulk density. Numerous hypotheses have been proposed in order to explain such a large iron content. A long-standing idea holds that Mercury once…

Possible bulk compositions of the super-Earth exoplanets, CoRoT-7b, Kepler-9d, and Kepler-10b are investigated by applying a commonly used silicate and a non-standard carbon model. Their internal structures are deduced using the suitable…

Metallic bodies that were the cores of differentiated bodies are sources of iron meteorites and are considered to have formed early in the terrestrial planet region before migrating to the main asteroid belt. Surface temperatures and mutual…

Recent structure models of Jupiter that match Juno gravity data suggest that the planet harbours an extended region in its deep interior that is enriched in heavy elements, a so-called dilute/fuzzy core. This finding raises the question of…

Recent measurements of Jupiter's gravitational field (by Juno) and seismology of Saturn's rings (by Cassini) strongly suggest that both planets have a stably-stratified core that still possesses a primordial gradient in the concentration of…

Probing the interiors of the gas giant planets in our Solar System is not an easy task. It requires a set of accurate measurements combined with theoretical models that are used to infer the planetary composition and its depth dependence.…

Europa's interior is expected to be divided into the metallic core, rocky mantle and hydrosphere based on the moment of inertia factor estimated from gravity field measurements. Specifically, the thickness of the outermost water layer is…

The New Horizons mission has provided resolved measurements of Pluto's moons Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra. All four are small, with equivalent spherical diameters of $\approx$40 km for Nix and Hydra and ~10 km for Styx and Kerberos. They…

We present a coupled reorientation and climate model, to understand how true polar wander (TPW) and atmospheric condensation worked together to create the Sputnik Planitia (SP) ice sheet and reorient it to its present-day location on Pluto.…