Related papers: Titan's Atmosphere and Climate

Impacts are critical to producing the aqueous environments necessary to stimulate prebiotic chemistry on Titan's surface. Furthermore, organic hazes resting on the surface are a likely feedstock of biomolecules. In this work, we conduct…

Venus shares many similarities with the Earth, but concomitantly, some of its features are extremely original. This is especially true for its atmosphere, where high pressures and temperatures are found at the ground level. In these…

Venus is Earth's sister planet, with similar mass and density but an uninhabitably hot surface, an atmosphere with a water activity 50-100 times lower than anywhere on Earths' surface, and clouds believed to be made of concentrated sulfuric…

Observations made during the New Horizons flyby provide a detailed snapshot of the current state of Pluto's atmosphere. While the lower atmosphere (at altitudes <200 km) is consistent with ground-based stellar occultations, the upper…

Thermochemical equilibrium and kinetic calculations for the trace gases CO, PH3, and SiH4 give three independent constraints on the water and total oxygen abundances of Saturn's deep atmosphere. A lower limit to the water abundance of…

The Ice Giants Uranus and Neptune have hydrogen-based atmospheres with several constituents that condense in their cold upper atmospheres. A small number of bright cloud systems observed in both planets are good candidates for moist…

In situ exploration of the planetary atmospheres requires the development of laboratory experiments to understand the molecular growth pathways initiated by photochemistry in the upper layers of the atmospheres. Major species and dominant…

Uranus and Neptune are the archetypes of "ice giants", a class of planets that may be among the most common in the Galaxy. They hold the keys to understand the atmospheric dynamics and structure of planets with hydrogen atmospheres inside…

Titan's atmosphere possesses thick haze layers, but their formation mechanisms remain poorly understood, including the influence of oxygen-containing gas components on organic matter synthesis. As the most abundant oxygen-containing gas,…

The weather layers of the gas giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn, comprise the shallow atmospheric layers that are influenced energetically by a combination of incoming solar radiation and localised latent heating of condensates, as well as…

One of the many exciting revelations of the New Horizons flyby of Pluto was the observation of global haze layers at altitudes as high as 200 km in the visible wavelengths. This haze is produced in the upper atmosphere through photochemical…

Triton possesses a thin atmosphere, primarily composed of nitrogen, sustained by the sublimation of surface ices. The goal is to determine the composition of Triton's atmosphere and to constrain the nature of surface-atmosphere…

Titan, Saturn's largest satellite, maintains an atmosphere composed primarily of nitrogen (N$_2$) and methane (CH$_4$) that leads to a complex organic chemistry. Some of the nitriles (CN-bearing organics) on Titan are known to have…

A defining characteristic of the planet Venus is its thick, CO2-dominated atmosphere. Despite over fifty years of robotic exploration, including thirteen successful atmosphere probes and landers, our knowledge of N2, the…

The composition of an atmosphere has integrated the geological history of the entire planetary body. However, the long-term evolutions of the atmospheres of the terrestrial planets are not well documented. For Earth, there were until…

Titan, with its thick and hazy atmosphere, is a key world in our solar system for understanding light scattering processes. NASA's Cassini mission monitored Titan between 2004 and 2017, where the derived dataset includes a large number of…

The determination of Saturn's atmospheric noble gas abundances are critical to understanding the formation and evolution of Saturn, and giant planets in general. These measurements can only be performed with an entry probe. A Saturn probe…

The incredible longevity of Cassini's orbital mission at Saturn has provided the most comprehensive exploration of a seasonal giant planet to date. This review explores Saturn's changing global temperatures, composition, and aerosol…

The Pluto system was recently explored by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, making closest approach on 14 July 2015. Pluto's surface displays diverse landforms, terrain ages, albedos, colors, and composition gradients. Evidence is found for a…

Prior to the arrival of Cassini-Huygens, aerosol production in Titan's atmosphere was believed to begin in the stratosphere where chemical processes are predominantly initiated by FUV radiation. However, measurements taken by Cassini UVIS…