Related papers: Haze in Pluto's Atmosphere
Planets reflect and linearly polarize the radiation that they receive from their host stars. The emergent polarization is sensitive to aspects of the planet atmosphere such as the gas composition and the occurrence of condensates and their…
Spectroscopic observations of a transit event of an extrasolar planet offer the opportunity to study the composition of the planetary atmosphere. We observed a transit of the inflated Hot Jupiter HAT-P-32b with MODS at the LBT to…
We are reporting on a new accurate photographic light curve of Pluto for 1933-1934 when the heliocentric distance was 40 AU. We used 43 B-band and V-band images of Pluto on 32 plates taken on 15 nights from 19 March 1933 to 10 March 1934.…
We simulate atmospheric fractionation in escaping planetary atmospheres using IsoFATE, a new open-source numerical model. We expand the parameter space studied previously to planets with tenuous atmospheres that exhibit the greatest helium…
Transmission spectroscopy to date has detected atomic and molecular absorption in Jupiter-sized exoplanets, but intense efforts to measure molecular absorption in the atmospheres of smaller (Neptune-sized) planets during transits have…
We use a 1D model to address photochemistry and possible haze formation in the irradiated warm Jupiter, 51 Eridani b. The intended focus was to be carbon, but sulfur photochemistry turns out to be important. The case for organic…
We report the detection of extended Lyman-alpha (Lya) haloes around 145 individual star-forming galaxies at redshifts 3<z<6 in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field observed with the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer at ESO-VLT. Our sample consists…
Atmospheric haze is the leading candidate for the flattening of expolanetary spectra, as it's also an important source of opacity in the atmospheres of solar system planets, satellites, and comets. Exoplanetary transmission spectra, which…
We use a planetary albedo model to investigate variations in visible wavelength phase curves of exoplanets. The presence of clouds on these exoplanets significantly alters their planetary albedo spectra. We confirm that non-uniform cloud…
The pervasive Mars dust is continually transported between the surface and the atmosphere. When on the surface, dust increases the albedo of darker underlying rocks and regolith, which modifies climate energy balance and must be quantified.…
Using X-ray constrained beta-models for the radial distribution of gas in the outskirts of galaxies, we analyze the termination of galactic winds and the formation and evolution of halo clouds by thermal instability. At low mass-loss rates,…
About 30-50% of the baryons in the local Universe are unaccounted for and are likely in a hot phase, 10^5.5-10^8 K. A hot halo (10^6.3 K) is detected around the Milky Way through the O VII and O VIII resonance absorption and emission lines…
We analyze an adaptive mesh refinement hydrodynamic cosmological simulation of a Milky Way-sized galaxy to study the cold gas in the halo. HI observations of the Milky Way and other nearby spirals have revealed the presence of such gas in…
The helium absorption triplet at a wavelength of 10,833 \AA\ has been proposed as a way to probe the escaping atmospheres of exoplanets. Recently this feature was detected for the first time using Hubble Space Telescope (HST) WFC3…
The discovery of Pluto in 1930 presaged the discoveries of both the Kuiper Belt and ice dwarf planets, which are the third class of planets in our solar system. From the 1970s to the 19990s numerous fascinating attributes of the Pluto…
A significant fraction of Milky Way (MW) satellites exhibit phase-space properties consistent with a coherent orbital plane. Using tailored N--body simulations of a spherical MW halo that recently captured a massive (1.8$\times…
Sprites are a spectacular type of transient luminous events (TLE) which occur above thunderstorms immediately after lightning. They have shapes of giant jellyfish, carrots or columns and last tens of milliseconds. In Earth's atmosphere,…
GALEX has detected ultraviolet halos extending as far as 5$^{\circ}$ around four bright stars (Murthy et al. (2011)). These halos are produced by scattering of starlight by dust grains in thin foreground clouds that are not physically…
The small satellites of the Pluto system (Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra) have very low surface escape velocities, and impacts should therefore eject a large amount of material from their surfaces. We show that most of this material then…
Pluto's surface displays a wide variety of geologic units from smooth plains to extremely rugged mountainous expanses. These terrains range in age from young, actively resurfaced regions (no observable craters even in the highest-resolution…