Related papers: Recent Tectonic Activity on Pluto Driven by Phase …
Data from the New Horizons mission to Pluto show no craters on Sputnik Planum down to the detection limit (2 km for low resolution data, 625 m for high resolution data). The number of small Kuiper Belt Objects that should be impacting Pluto…
We investigate the effects of varying Saturn's orbit on the atmospheric circulation and surface methane distribution of Titan. Using a new general circulation model of Titan's atmosphere, we simulate its climate under four characteristic…
Earth-mass planets are expected to have atmospheres and experience thermal tides raised by the host star. These tides transfer energy to the planet that can counter the dissipation from bodily tides. Indeed, even a relatively thin…
Topography on a wet rocky exoplanet could raise land above its sea level. Although land elevation is the product of many complex processes, the large-scale topographic features on any geodynamically-active planet are the expression of the…
Neptune's present axial tilt of approximately 28 deg. with respect to its orbital plane can be explained by collisions that its primordial core may have experienced with surrounding planetary embryos during the final stages of its…
Polar vortices are common planetary flows that encircle the pole in the middle or high latitudes, and are observed on most of the solar systems' planetary atmospheres. The polar vortices on Earth, Mars, and Titan are dynamically related to…
Observational data suggest that the ice shell on Enceladus is thicker at the equator than at the pole, indicating an equator-to-pole ice flow. If the ice shell is in an equilibrium state, the mass transport of the ice flow must be balanced…
The principles of Whole-Earth Decompression Dynamics are disclosed leading to a new way to interpret whole-Earth dynamics. Whole-Earth Decompression Dynamics incorporates elements of and unifies the two seemingly divergent dominant theories…
Extra-solar planets close to their host stars have likely undergone significant tidal evolution since the time of their formation. Tides probably dominated their orbital evolution once the dust and gas had cleared away, and as the orbits…
Saturn raises a time-dependent tide on its small moon Enceladus, due to the eccentricity of the orbit. As shown in a companion paper (Goldreich et al.), the resulting tidal heating drives Enceladus into a limit cycle, in which its…
The seasonal evolution of Saturn's polar atmospheric temperatures and hydrocarbon composition is derived from a decade of Cassini Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) 7-16 $\mu$m thermal infrared spectroscopy. We construct a…
Neptune's moon Triton shares many similarities with Pluto, including volatile cycles of N2, CH4 and CO, and represents a benchmark case for the study of surface-atmosphere interactions on volatile-rich KBOs. Within the context of New…
The Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation (PEPSSI) comprises the hardware and accompanying science investigation on the New Horizons spacecraft to measure pick-up ions from Pluto's outgassing atmosphere. To the extent…
An analytic expression for the variation in surface and sub-surface temperature is developed for worlds whose surface pressures are nearly constant with latitude and longitude and whose atmospheres are in vapor-pressure equilibrium with the…
The coupled interior-atmosphere system of terrestrial exoplanets remains poorly understood. Exoplanets show a wide variety of sizes, densities, surface temperatures, and interior structures, with important knock-on effects for this coupled…
A stellar occultation by Pluto was observed on 6 June 2020 with the 1.3-m and 3.6-m telescopes located at Devasthal, Nainital, India, using imaging systems in the I and H bands, respectively. From this event, we derive a surface pressure…
Recent discoveries of several transiting planets with clearly non-zero eccentricities and some large inclinations started changing the simple picture of close-in planets having circular and well-aligned orbits. Two major scenarios to form…
Titan's ice shell floats on top of a global ocean revealed by the large tidal Love number $k_2 = 0.616\pm0.067$ registered by Cassini. The Cassini observation exceeds the predicted $k_2$ by one order of magnitude in the absence of an ocean,…
The stability of Earth's climate on geological timescales is enabled by the carbon-silicate cycle that acts as a negative feedback mechanism stabilizing surface temperatures via the intake and outgas of atmospheric carbon. On Earth, this…
Ammonia, if present in the ice shells of icy satellites, could lower the temperature for the onset of melting to 176 K and create a large temperature range where partial melt is thermally stable. The evolution of regions of ammonia-rich…