Related papers: Phoebe: a surface dominated by water
(3200) Phaethon is a compelling object as it has an asteroidal appearance and spectrum, produces a weak dust tail during perihelion at just 0.14 AU, and is the parent body of the Geminid Meteor Shower. A better understanding of the physical…
The cosmic infrared background (CIRB) consists mainly of the integrated light of distant galaxies. In the far-infrared the current estimates of its surface brightness are based on the measurements of the COBE satellite. Independent…
The benchmark exoplanet GJ 1214b is one of the best studied transiting planets in the transition zone between rocky Earth-sized planets and gas or ice giants. This class of super-Earth/mini-Neptune planets is unknown in our Solar System,…
Since 1978, sensors on remote-sensing satellites have provided global, multi-band images at optical wavelengths to assess ocean color. In parallel, sophisticated radiative transfer models account for attenuation and emission by the Earth's…
Phobos is the target of the return sample mission Martian Moons eXploration by JAXA that will analyze in great details the physical and compositional properties of the satellite from orbit, from the surface and in terrestrial laboratories,…
The cosmic infrared background (CIB) radiation was a long-sought fossil of energetic processes associated with structure formation and chemical evolution since the Big Bang. The COBE Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment (DIRBE) and Far…
Spectroscopic observations constrain the fundamental properties of stellar atmospheres, in particular, the effective temperature, the gravitational acceleration, or the metallicity. In this work, we describe the spectroscopic module for…
The first exploration of Pluto was motivated by (i) the many intriguing aspects of this body, its atmosphere, and its giant impact binary-planet formation; as well as (ii) the scientific desire to initiate the reconnaissance of the…
Surface porosity has been found to be an important property for small bodies. Some asteroids and comets can exhibit an extremely high surface porosity in the first millimeter layer. This layer may be produced by various processes and…
Cybele asteroids constitute an appealing reservoir of primitive material genetically linked to the outer Solar System, and the physical properties of the largest members can be readily accessed by large telescopes. We took advantage of the…
Here we show that Iapetus can serve to discriminate between satellite formation models. Its accretion history can be understood in terms of a two-component gaseous subnebula, with a relatively dense inner region, and an extended tail out to…
Irregular moons are a class of satellite found orbiting all of the Solar System's giant planets: as their orbits don't match those of their planets, they are theorised to have formed elsewhere in the Solar System and were subsequently…
We present thermal model fits for 11 Jovian and 3 Saturnian irregular satellites based on measurements from the WISE/NEOWISE dataset. Our fits confirm spacecraft-measured diameters for the objects with in situ observations (Himalia and…
Solid state CO$_2$ has been detected throughout the outer solar system, even at temperatures where crystalline CO$_2$ is unstable, requiring that the CO$_2$ be trapped in a separate host material. The Saturnian satellites provide an ideal…
Recently, it has been discovered that at least 1% of Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) are accompanied by large satellites. Here we examine the energetics of KBO satellite formation via collisions, finding collisions require a dynamically excited…
The Kepler mission has detected transits and occultations of a hot compact object around an early-type star, the Kepler Object of Interest KOI 74. The mass of this transiting object was photometrically assessed in a previous study using the…
The precision of photometric and spectroscopic observations has been systematically improved in the last decade, mostly thanks to space-borne photometric missions and ground-based spectrographs dedicated to finding exoplanets. The field of…
We confirm the planetary nature of Kepler-412b, listed as planet candidate KOI-202 in the Kepler catalog, thanks to our radial velocity follow-up program of Kepler-released planet candidates, which is on going with the SOPHIE spectrograph.…
A new three-dimensional model of the solar photosphere is presented in this paper and made publicly available to the community. This model has the peculiarity that it has been obtained by inverting spectro-polarimetric observations, rather…
When the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) was conceived and its first science cases defined, exoplanets had not been detected. Later studies, however, showed that optical and near-infrared photometric and…