Related papers: The surface temperature of Europa
We present an analysis of recent high spatial and spectral resolution ground-based infrared observations of H3+ spectra obtained with the 10-metre Keck II telescope in April 2011. We observed H3+ emission from Saturn's northern and southern…
The interior flux of a giant planet impacts atmospheric motion, and the atmosphere dictates the interior's cooling. Here we use a non-hydrostatic general circulation model (Simulating Nonhydrostatic Atmospheres on Planets, SNAP) coupled…
We explore the effects of seasonal variability for the climate of Earth-like planets as determined by the two parameters polar obliquity and orbital eccentricity using a general circulation model of intermediate complexity. In the first…
The effect of rotation on the cooling of neutron stars is investigated. The thermal evolution equations are solved in two dimensions with full account of general relativistic effects. It is found that rotation is particularly important in…
The thermal evolution and interior structure of giant exoplanets are sensitive to the treatment of radiative opacity. At temperatures of ~2000 K, depletion of alkali metals can create a window of reduced opacity, potentially giving rise to…
Recent studies have shown that large exomoons can form in the accretion disks around super-Jovian extrasolar planets. These planets are abundant at about 1 AU from Sun-like stars, which makes their putative moons interesting for studies of…
A fundamental question in the study of planetary system demographics is: how common is the solar system architecture? The primary importance of this question lies in the potential of planetary systems to create habitable environments, and…
Secondary eclipse observations of several of the hottest hot Jupiters show featureless, blackbody-like spectra or molecular emission features, which are consistent with thermal inversions being present in those atmospheres. Theory predicts…
Jupiter's moon Europa has a thin icy crust which is decoupled from the mantle by a subsurface ocean. The crust thus responds to tidal forcing as a deformed membrane, cold at the top and near melting point at the bottom. In this paper I…
Magnetic activity on stars manifests itself in the form of dark spots on the stellar surface, that cause modulation of a few percent in the light curve of the star as it rotates. When a planet eclipses its host star, it might cross in front…
Deciphering the structure of the circumplanetary disk that surrounded Jupiter at the end of its formation is key to understanding how the Galilean moons formed. Three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations have shown that this disk was…
Recently Knutson et al. (2010) have demonstrated a correlation between the presence of temperature inversions in the atmospheres of hot Jupiters, and the chromospheric activity levels of the host stars. Here we show that there is also a…
Global climate change is one of main concern of modern society. To estimate this change usually one estimates the global mean temperature. Measuring and calculating the Earth's average temperature are multi-steps complex processes which…
Hot Jupiters are typically considered to be tidally locked due to their short orbital periods. The extreme irradiation can result in atmospheric species becoming thermally ionized on the dayside, which then interact with the planet's…
Europa has been modified by a variety of geologic processes, exposing internally-derived materials that are heavily irradiated by charged particles trapped in Jupiter's magnetosphere. Prior spectral analysis of H2O ice on Europa relied on…
The presence of convective and turbulent motions, and the evolution of magnetic fields give rise to existence of temperature fluctuations in stellar atmospheres, active galactic nuclei and other cosmic objects. We observe the time and…
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…
We report on a multi-wavelength observational campaign which followed the Earth's transit on the Sun as seen from Jupiter on 5 Jan the 2014. Simultaneous observations of Jupiter's moons Europa and Ganymede obtained with HARPS from La Silla,…
The radii of hot Jupiters are still not fully understood and all of the proposed explanations are based on the idea that these close-in giant planets possess hot interiors. We approach the radius anomaly problem by adopting a statistical…
The atmospheres of hot Jupiters and other strongly-forced exoplanets are susceptible to a thermal instability in the presence of ohmic dissipation, weak magnetic drag and strong winds. The instability occurs in radiatively-dominated…