Related papers: Titan brighter at twilight than in daylight
Thanks to the Cassini Huygens mission, it is now established that the first aerosols in Titan s upper atmosphere are found from an altitude of about 1200 km. Once they are formed and through their descent towards the surface, these…
Pluto, Titan, and Triton make up a unique class of solar system bodies, with icy surfaces and chemically reducing atmospheres rich in organic photochemistry and haze formation. Hazes play important roles in these atmospheres, with physical…
Titan is one of the more distinctive bodies in our solar system. In addition to being the largest of Saturn's moons, its thick atmosphere gene-rates interest because of its similarities and differences with Earth [1, 2]. Like Earth, Titan's…
We use solar occultations observed by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer aboard the Cassini Spacecraft to extract the 1 to 5 micron transmission spectrum of Saturn, as if it were a transiting exoplanet. We detect absorption from…
Shematovich et al. (2003) recently showed plasma induced sputtering in Titan's atmosphere is a source of neutral nitrogen in Saturn's magnetosphere comparable to the photo-dissociation source. These sources form a toroidal nitrogen cloud…
Glint, the specular reflection of sunlight off Earth's oceans, may reveal the presence of oceans on an extrasolar planet. As an Earth-like planet nears crescent phases, the size of the ocean glint spot increases relative to the fraction of…
We present phase curves of Jupiter from 0-140 degrees as measured in multiple optical bandpasses by Cassini/ISS during the Millennium flyby of Jupiter in late 2000 to early 2001. Phase curves are of interest for studying the energy balance…
We report on Fe I in the day-side atmosphere of the ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-33b, providing evidence for a thermal inversion in the presence of an atomic species. We also introduce a new way to constrain the planet's brightness variation…
Titan's northern high latitudes host many large hydrocarbon lakes. Like water lakes on Earth, Titan's lakes are constantly subject to evaporation. This process strongly affects the atmospheric methane abundance, the atmospheric temperature,…
The Cassini-Huygens mission detected large negative ions in Titan's ionosphere at pressures as low as $10^{-6}$ torr. These ions ultimately polymerize to form Titan's complex organic haze particles, which are observed throughout the…
A clustering algorithm is applied to Cassini Imaging Science Subsystem continuum and methane band images of Saturns northern hemisphere to objectively classify regional albedo features and aid in their dynamical interpretation. The…
Through a simple physical argument we show that the slant optical depth through the atmosphere of a "hot Jupiter" planet is 35-90 times greater than the normal optical depth. This not unexpected result has direct consequences for the method…
The atmosphere of a transiting planet shields the stellar radiation providing us with a powerful method to estimate its size and density. In particular, because of their high ionization energy, atoms with high atomic number (Z) absorb…
Observations of exoplanet transit spectra are essential to understanding the physics and chemistry of distant worlds. The effects of opacity sources and many physical processes combine to set the shape of a transit spectrum. Two such key…
The nearby transiting planet HD 189733b was observed during three transits with the ACS camera of the Hubble Space Telescope in spectroscopic mode. The resulting time series of 675 spectra covers the 550-1050 nm range, with a resolution…
We examine Saturn's non-auroral (dayglow) emissions at Lyman-$\alpha$ observed by the {Cassini/UVIS} instrument from 2004 until 2016, to constrain meridional and seasonal trends in the upper atmosphere. We separate viewing geometry effects…
We report the detection of extended Halpha emission from the tip of the HI disk of the nearby edge-on galaxy UGC 7321, observed with the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument at the Very Large Telescope. The Halpha surface…
Titan, the biggest moon of Saturn, has a thick atmosphere which presents similarities with the one thought to be on Earth at its beginning. The study of Titan s photochemical haze is thus a precious tool in gaining knowledge of the…
For the majority of optical observing programs, the sky brightness provides the fundamental limit to signal detection such that the scientific feasibility is largely dictated by the moon phase. Since most observatories do not have the…
Winds in Titan's lower and middle atmosphere have been determined by a variety of techniques, including direct measurements from the Huygens Probe over 0-150 km, Doppler shifts of molecular spectral lines in the optical, thermal infrared…