Related papers: Titan brighter at twilight than in daylight
The crystalline state of water ice in the Solar System depends on the temperature history of the ice and the influence of energetic particles to which it has been exposed. We measured the infrared absorption spectra of amorphous and…
This study presents a 13 years survey of haze UV extinction profiles, monitoring the temporal evolution of the detached haze layer (DHL) in Titan's upper atmosphere (350-600 km). As reported by West et al. 2011 (GRL vol.38, L06204) at the…
The Voyager 1 flyby of Titan in 1980 gave a first glimpse of the chemical complexity of Titan's atmosphere, detecting many new molecules with the infrared spectrometer (IRIS). These included propane (C3H8) and propyne (CH3C2H), while the…
The complex organic chemistry harbored by the atmosphere of Titan has been investigated in depth by Cassini observations. Among them, a series of solar occultations performed by the VIMS instrument throughout the 13 years of Cassini…
Saturn's moon Titan exhibits remarkable parallels to the Earth in many geophysical and geological processes not found elsewhere in the solar system at the present day. These include a nitrogen atmosphere with a condensible gas - methane -…
Titan's surface was revealed by Cassini's instruments, showing the presence of liquid hydrocarbons in lakes, and features like dry riverbed. In order to study the sediment transport in Titan's channels and to map distribution of the…
Observations indicate that some extended outer disks have a sharp cut off in the surface density of neutral hydrogen when this approaches the value of $\sim 2\times 10^{19}$ cm$^{-2}$. In this paper we model these HI edges as places where…
The Cassini spacecraft made a gravity assist flyby of Jupiter in December 2000. The Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) acquired images of the planet that covered the visual range with filters sensitive to the distribution of clouds and hazes,…
Spectral observations of Neptune made in 2019 with the MUSE instrument at the Very Large Telescope in Chile have been analysed to determine the spatial variation of aerosol scattering properties and methane abundance in Neptune's…
We demonstrate the ability of existing and planned telescopes, on the ground and in space, to directly image tidally heated exomoons orbiting gas-giant exoplanets. Tidally heated exomoons can plausibly be far more luminous than their host…
It has been posited that lunar eclipse observations may help predict the in-transit signature of Earth-like extrasolar planets. However, a comparative analysis of the two phenomena addressing in detail the transport of stellar light through…
We present new measurements of the intensity of the ionizing ultraviolet background and the global emissivity of ionizing photons over 2 < z < 5. Our results are based on a suite of updated measurements of physical properties of the…
Titan's atmosphere is a natural laboratory for exploring the photochemical synthesis of organic molecules. Significant recent advances in the study of the atmosphere of Titan include: (a) detection of C$_3$ molecules: C$_3$H$_6$,…
Multi-colour broad-band transit observations offer the opportunity to characterise the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet with small- to medium-sized telescopes. One of the most favourable targets is the hot Jupiter HAT-P-32 b. We combined…
Assuming a spherical symmetry, the extreme UV emitted by a very hot source ionizes low pressure molecular hydrogen making a transparent bubble of H II (Protons and electrons). For an increase of radius, intensity of extreme UV and…
The abundance of deuterium in giant planet atmospheres provides constraints on the reservoirs of ices incorporated into these worlds during their formation and evolution. Motivated by discrepancies in the measured deuterium-hydrogen ratio…
The hot Jupiter HD 209458b is particularly amenable to detailed study as it is among the brightest transiting exoplanet systems currently known (V-mag = 7.65; K-mag = 6.308) and has a large planet-to-star contrast ratio. HD 209458b is…
Titan's ice shell floats on top of a global ocean revealed by the large tidal Love number $k_2 = 0.616\pm0.067$ registered by Cassini. The Cassini observation exceeds the predicted $k_2$ by one order of magnitude in the absence of an ocean,…
Using Chandra ACIS-S, we have obtained imaging Xray spectrophotometry of the Pluto system in support of the New Horizons flyby on 14 July 2015. 174 ksec of observations were obtained on 4 visits in Feb 2014 to Aug 2015. We measured a net…
We present Hubble Space Telescope optical and near-ultraviolet transmission spectra of the transiting hot-Jupiter HD189733b, taken with the repaired Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) instrument. The resulting spectra cover the…