Related papers: Surface Compositions Across Pluto and Charon
Recently, we presented the detection of carbon monoxide in the transmission spectrum of extrasolar planet HD209458b, using CRIRES, the Cryogenic high-resolution Infrared Echelle Spectrograph at ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT). The high…
A time-variable 1D photochemical model is used to study the distribution of stratospheric hydrocarbons as a function of altitude, latitude, and season on Uranus and Neptune. The results for Neptune indicate that in the absence of…
We derive the chlorine abundances in a sample of nearby planetary nebulae (PNe) and H II regions that have some of the best available spectra. We use a nearly homogeneous procedure to derive the abundance in each object and find that the…
Planets are often covered with thin cracked shells. From mud films to lithospheres of rock or ice, fracture networks form two-dimensional (2D) tessellations of convex polygons whose geometry encodes their genesis. Here we chart the geometry…
The formation mechanisms of the ice giants Uranus and Neptune, and the origin of their elemental and isotopic compositions, have long been debated. The density of solids in the outer protosolar nebula is too low to explain their formation,…
High-resolution spectroscopy (HRS) has grown into one of the main techniques to characterise the atmospheres of extrasolar planets. High spectral resolving power allows for the efficient removal of telluric and host-star contamination.…
Context. We study the surface properties of transneptunian populations of Solar-system bodies. Aims. We investigate the surface characteristics of the dwarf planet (136472) Makemake and the resonant object (90482) Orcus. Methods. Using the…
Using data from the Infrared Array Camera on the Spitzer Space Telescope, we present photometric observations of a sample of 100 trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) beyond 2.2 {\mu}m. These observations, collected with two broad-band filters…
Multi-colour broad-band transit observations offer the opportunity to characterise the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet with small- to medium-sized telescopes. One of the most favourable targets is the hot Jupiter HAT-P-32 b. We combined…
In the outer solar system beyond Jupiter, water ice is a dominant component of planetary bodies, and most solid objects in this region are classified as icy bodies. Icy bodies display a remarkable diversity of geological, geophysical, and…
The H2O abundance of a planetary atmosphere is a powerful indicator of formation conditions. Inferring H2O in the solar system giant planets is challenging, due to condensation depleting the upper atmosphere of water vapour. Substantially…
Many extrasolar (bound) terrestrial planets and free-floating (unbound) planets have been discovered. The existence of bound and unbound terrestrial planets with liquid water is an important question, and of particular importance is the…
The NASA New Horizons spacecraft flies past Pluto on July 14, 2015, carrying two instruments that detect charged particles. Pluto has a tenuous, extended atmosphere that is escaping the weak gravity of the planet. The interaction of the…
The relative abundance of deuterium and hydrogen is a potent tracer of planet formation and evolution. Jupiter and Saturn have protosolar atmospheric D/H ratios, a relic of substantial gas accretion from the nebula, while the atmospheres of…
The formation of Pluto's small satellites - Styx, Nix, Keberos and Hydra - remains a mystery. Their orbits are nearly circular and are near mean-motion resonances and nearly coplanar with Charon's orbit. One scenario suggests that they all…
The emergent spectra of close-in, giant exoplanets ("hot Jupiters") are expected to be distinct from those of self-luminous objects with similar effective temperatures because hot Jupiters are primarily heated from above by their host stars…
The recent discovery of dense rings around the Centaur Chariklo (and possibly Chiron) reveals that complete dense planetary rings are not only found around Saturn and Uranus, but also around small bodies orbiting in the vicinity of those…
We numerically investigate the orbital dynamics of a spacecraft, or a comet, or an asteroid in the Pluto-Charon system in a scattering region around Charon using the planar circular restricted three-body problem. The test particle can move…
We propose a chemical and dynamical process to explain the surface colors of the Kuiper belt. In our hypothesis, the initial bulk compositions of the bodies themselves can be quite diverse -- as is seen in comets -- but the early surface…
For most planets in the range of radii from 1 to 4 R$_{\oplus}$, water is a major component of the interior composition. At high pressure H${}_{2}$O can be solid, but for larger planets, like Neptune, the temperature can be too high for…