Related papers: VIPER - Student research on extraterrestrial ice p…
Active eruptions from the south polar region of Saturn's small (~500 km diameter) moon Enceladus are concentrated along a series of lineaments known as the `tiger stripes', thought to be partially open fissures that connect to the liquid…
The ever-expanding catalog of detected super-Earths calls for theoretical studies of their properties in the case of a substantial water layer. This work considers such water planets with a range of masses and water mass fractions (2 to 5…
The deep (~100 km) ocean of Europa, Jupiter's moon, covered by a thick icy shell, is one of the most probable places in the solar system to find extraterrestrial life. Yet, its ocean dynamics and its interaction with the ice cover have…
Jupiter's icy moons are believed to host subsurface liquid oceans, and among them, Europa stands out as one of the most promising candidates for extraterrestrial life. Yet, the processes driving oceanic flows beneath its ice shell, as well…
Context. Comets are small celestial bodies made of ice, dust, and rock that orbit the Sun. Understanding their behavior as they warm up at perihelion unveils many pieces of information about the interior and general morphology of the ices…
Ice deposits on Earth provide an extended record of volcanism, planetary climate, and life. On Mars, such a record may extend as far back as tens to hundreds of millions of years (My), compared to only a few My on Earth. Here, we propose…
Europa's icy surface likely overlies an ocean, but the ice thickness is not known. Here we model the temporal growth of a Europan shell of pure ice subject to varying ice-ocean heat fluxes, ice rheologies, and internal heating rates. Both…
The origin of rings around giant planets remains elusive. Saturn's rings are massive and made of 90-95% of water ice. In contrast, the much less massive rings of Uranus and Neptune are dark and likely to have higher rock fraction. Here we…
The geologic activity at Enceladus's south pole remains unexplained, though tidal deformations are probably the ultimate cause. Recent gravity and libration data indicate that Enceladus's icy crust floats on a global ocean, is rather thin,…
We present an analysis of data about Saturn's atmosphere from Cassini's Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS), focusing on the meteorology of the features seen in the 5-micron spectral window. We present VIMS mosaics and discuss…
Enceladus exhibits some remarkable phenomena, including water geysers spraying through surface cracks, a global ice shell that is librating atop an ocean, a large luminosity, and rapid outward orbital migration. Here we model the coupled…
Remote sensing observations meet some limitations when used to study the bulk atmospheric composition of the giant planets of our solar system. A remarkable example of the superiority of in situ probe measurements is illustrated by the…
Extremely large deuteration of several molecules has been observed towards prestellar cores and low-mass protostars for a decade. New observations performed towards low-mass protostars suggest that water presents a lower deuteration in the…
One of the striking features about Venus atmosphere is its temporal variability and dynamics, with a chaotic polar vortex, large-scale atmospheric waves, sheared features, and variable winds that depend on local time and possibly orographic…
Water is predicted to be among, if not the most abundant molecular species after hydrogen in the atmospheres of close-in extrasolar giant planets (hot-Jupiters) Several attempts have been made to detect water on an exoplanet, but have…
The fluid dynamics in planet Saturn gives rise to alternating east-west jet streams, large cyclonic and anticyclonic vortices, and a dipole-dominant magnetic field which is highly axisymmetric about the planetary rotation axis. Modelling…
We discuss the nature of rings that may exist around extrasolar planets. Taking the general properties of rings around the gas giants in the Solar System, we infer the likely properties of rings around exoplanets that reside inside the ice…
Recently there has been tremendous increase in the number of identified extra-solar planetary systems. Our understanding of their formation is tied to exoplanet internal structure models, which rely upon equations of state of light elements…
A multiphysics simulation model incorporating a sintering model coupled with the MultIHeaTS thermal solver was developed to study the evolution of icy moons' microstructure. The sintering process is highly dependent on temperature, and this…
On icy worlds, the ice shell and subsurface ocean form a coupled system -- heat and salinity flux from the ice shell induced by the ice thickness gradient drives circulation in the ocean, and in turn, the heat transport by ocean circulation…