Related papers: The surface temperature of Europa
Seismic data will be a vital geophysical constraint on internal structure of Europa if we land instruments on the surface. Quantifying expected seismic activity on Europa both in terms of large, recognizable signals and ambient background…
The atmosphere on the dayside of a highly irradiated close-in gas giant (also known as a hot Jupiter) absorbs a significant part of the incident stellar radiation which again gets re-emitted in the infrared wavelengths both from the day and…
The circulation in Europa's ocean determines the degree of thermal, mechanical and chemical coupling between the ice shell and the silicate mantle. Using global direct numerical simulations, we investigate the effect of heterogeneous tidal…
In this paper, we look at space weathering processes on the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. The heavy energetic ions of the Jovian plasma (H+, O+, S+, C+) can erode the surface of Europa via ion sputtering (IS), ejecting up to 1000…
With the detection of extrasolar moons (exomoons) on the horizon, it is important to consider their potential for habitability. If we consider the circumstellar Habitable Zone (HZ, often described in terms of planet semi-major axis and…
The full-phase infrared light curves of low-eccentricity hot Jupiters show a trend of increasing fractional dayside-nightside brightness temperature difference with increasing incident stellar flux, both averaged across the infrared and in…
The variation with time from 1956-2002 of the globally averaged rate of ionization produced by cosmic rays in the atmosphere is deduced and shown to have a cyclic component of period roughly twice the 11 year solar cycle period. Long term…
A multiphysics simulation model incorporating a sintering model coupled with the MultIHeaTS thermal solver was developed to study the evolution of icy moons' microstructure. The sintering process is highly dependent on temperature, and this…
Orbital forcing plays a key role in pacing the glacial-interglacial cycles. However, the mechanistic linkages between the orbital parameters - eccentricity, obliquity, and precession - and global ice volume remain unclear. Here, we…
There have been many proposed explanations for the larger-than-expected radii of some transiting hot Jupiters, including either stellar or orbital energy deposition deep in the atmosphere or deep in the interior. In this paper, we explore…
The extremely close proximity of hot Jupiters to their parent stars has dramatically affected both their atmospheres and interiors, inflating them to up to twice the radius of Jupiter. The physical mechanism responsible for this inflation…
Europa's surface composition and evidence for cryovolcanic activity can provide insight into the properties and composition of the subsurface ocean, allowing the evaluation of its potential habitability. One promising avenue for revealing…
Extremely irradiated hot Jupiters, exoplanets reaching dayside temperatures ${>}$2000 K, stretch our understanding of planetary atmospheres and the models we use to interpret observations. While these objects are planets in every other…
In order to understand the climate on terrestrial planets orbiting nearby Sun-like stars, one would like to know their thermal inertia. We use a global climate model to simulate the thermal phase variations of Earth-analogs and test whether…
Exploring planetary systems similar to our solar system can provide a means to explore a large range of possibly temperate climates on Earth-like worlds. Rather than run hundreds of simulations with different eccentricities at fixed…
Variation in total solar irradiance is thought to have little effect on the Earth's surface temperature because of the thermal time constant--the characteristic response time of the Earth's global surface temperature to changes in forcing.…
We present best-fit values of porosity -- and the corresponding effective thermal inertiae -- determined from three different depths in Europa's near-subsurface (~1-20 cm). The porosity of the upper ~20 cm of Europa's subsurface varies…
Since the 1950s, quasi-periodic oscillations have been studied in the terrestrial equatorial stratosphere. Other planets of the solar system present (or are expected to present) such oscillations, like the Jupiter Equatorial…
We report 78 secondary eclipse depths for a sample of 36 transiting hot Jupiters observed at 3.6- and 4.5 microns using the Spitzer Space Telescope. Our eclipse results for 27 of these planets are new, and include highly irradiated worlds…
The full-phase infrared light curves of low-eccentricity hot Jupiters show a trend of increasing dayside-to-nightside brightness temperature difference with increasing equilibrium temperature. Here we present a three-dimensional model that…