Related papers: Titan's Atmosphere and Climate
The Voyager flyby observations revealed that a very broad doughnut shaped distribution of the hydrogen atoms existed in the Saturnian magnetosphere. Recent Cassini observations confirmed the local-time asymmetry but also showed the hydrogen…
Nitrogen is the most common element in Earth's atmosphere and also appears to be present in significant amounts in the mantle. However, its long-term cycling between these two reservoirs remains poorly understood. Here a range of biotic and…
Very little experimental work has been done to explore the properties of photochemical hazes formed in atmospheres with very different compositions or temperatures than that of the outer solar system or of early Earth. With extrasolar…
All three terrestrial planets with atmospheres support O3 layers of some thickness. While currently only that of Earth is substantial enough to be climatically significant, we hypothesize that ancient Mars may also have supported a thick O3…
As an exoplanet transits its host star, some of the light from the star is absorbed by the atoms and molecules in the planet's atmosphere, causing the planet to seem bigger; plotting the planet's observed size as a function of the…
The hydrocarbons seas of Titan, discovered by Cassini/Huygens mission are among the most mysterious and interesting features of this moon. In the future, a possible dedicated planetary probe, will certainly measure the speed of sound in…
Between 2004 and 2007 the instruments of the CASSINI spacecraft discovered hydrocarbon lakes in the polar regions of Titan. We have developed a lake-atmosphere equilibrium model allowing the determination of the chemical composition of…
The ionosphere of Titan hosts a complex ion chemistry leading to the formation of organic dust below 1200 km. Current models cannot fully explain the observed electron temperature in this dusty environment. To achieve new insight, we have…
The New Horizons spacecraft, which flew by Pluto on July 14, 2015, revealed the presence of haze in Pluto's atmosphere that were formed by CH4/N2 photochemistry at high altitudes in Pluto's atmosphere, as on Titan and Triton. In order to…
The upper atmospheres of the planets and their satellites are more directly exposed to sunlight and solar wind particles than the surface or the deeper atmospheric layers. At the altitudes where the associated energy is deposited, the…
The ice giants Uranus and Neptune are the least understood class of planets in our solar system but the most frequently observed type of exoplanets. Presumed to have a small rocky core, a deep interior comprising ~70% heavy elements…
Volatile organic molecules formed by photochemistry in the upper atmosphere of Titan can undergo condensation as pure ices in the stratosphere and the troposphere as well as condense as ice layers onto the organic aerosols that are visible…
The aim of this short contribution is to report some preliminary results on a theoretical model of the internal structure of Titan, the satellite of Saturn. All the calculations were performed within the SK theory of dense matter. The…
Over 4 billion years ago, Earth is thought to have been a hazy world akin to Saturn's moon Titan. The organic hazes in the atmosphere at this time could contain a vast inventory of life's building blocks, and thus may have seeded warm…
Traditionally, the search for life on exoplanets has been predominantly focused on rocky exoplanets. Hycean worlds are a class of habitable sub-Neptunes with planet-wide oceans and H2-rich atmospheres. Their broad range of possible sizes…
It is now understood that the accretion of terrestrial planets naturally involves giant collisions, the moon-forming impact being a well known example. In the aftermath of such collisions the surface of the surviving planet is very hot and…
Saturn's Moon Titan receives volatiles into the top of its atmosphere-including atomic oxygen-sourced from cryovolcanoes on Enceladus. Similar types of atmosphere exchange from one body to another, such as O2 and O3 sourced from TRAPPIST-1…
A planet's Lyman-{\alpha} (Ly{\alpha}) emission is sensitive to its thermospheric structure. Here, we report joint Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and Cassini cross-calibration observations of the Saturn Ly{\alpha} emission made two weeks…
What kind of environment may exist on terrestrial planets around other stars? In spite of the lack of direct observations, it may not be premature to speculate on exoplanetary climates, for instance to optimize future telescopic…
Our present-day atmosphere is often used as an analog for potentially habitable exoplanets, but Earth's atmosphere has changed dramatically throughout its 4.5 billion year history. For example, molecular oxygen is abundant in the atmosphere…