Related papers: Pluto's Haze as a Surface Material
White and brown dwarfs are astrophysical objects that are bright enough to support an insolation habitable zone (IHZ). Unlike hydrogen-burning stars, they cool and become less luminous with time, and hence their IHZ moves in with time. The…
We investigate the convective stability of two popular types of model of the gas distribution in the hot Galactic halo. We first consider models in which the halo density and temperature decrease exponentially with height above the disk.…
The atmospheres of the four giant planets of our Solar System share a common and well-observed characteristic: they each display patterns of planetary banding, with regions of different temperatures, composition, aerosol properties and…
Considering effects of tidal plus centrifugal stress acting on icy-rocks and the tensile strength thereof, icy-rocks being in the density range (1-2.4) g cm-3 which had come into existence as collisional ejecta (debris) in the vicinity of…
Observations of temperate sub-Neptunes suggest active chemical environments, finding evidence of both water vapor and photochemical hazes in their atmospheres. Hazes formed in water-rich atmospheres are chemically complex, containing…
Protoplanets growing by pebble accretion capture massive hydrogen-helium atmospheres from the surrounding nebula. Pebbles settling through such atmospheres continuously release gravitational potential energy, heating both the atmosphere and…
Pluto's surface displays a wide variety of geologic units from smooth plains to extremely rugged mountainous expanses. These terrains range in age from young, actively resurfaced regions (no observable craters even in the highest-resolution…
We show that element diffusion can produce large fluctuations in the initial helium abundance of the star-forming clouds. Diffusion time-scale, which in stars is much larger than the Hubble time, can fall below 10^8 years in the neutral gas…
The standard treatment of cooling in Cold Dark Matter halos assumes that all of the gas within a ``cooling radius'' cools and contracts monolithically to fuel galaxy formation. Here we take into account the expectation that the hot gas in…
Photochemical hazes have been frequently used to interpret exoplanet transmission spectra that show an upward slope towards shorter wavelengths and weak molecular features. While previous studies have only considered spherical haze…
Thousands of transiting exoplanets have been discovered, but spectral analysis of their atmospheres has so far been dominated by a small number of exoplanets and data spanning relatively narrow wavelength ranges (such as 1.1 to 1.7 {\mu}m).…
Planets larger than Earth and smaller than Neptune are some of the most numerous in the galaxy, but observational efforts to understand this population have proved challenging because optically thick clouds or hazes at high altitudes…
The lithium plateau observed in halo stars has long appeared as a paradox in the general context of the lithium abundance behavior in stellar outer layers. First, the plateau is flat, second, the lithium abundance dispersion is extremely…
We analyze an adaptive mesh refinement hydrodynamic cosmological simulation of a Milky Way-sized galaxy to study the cold gas in the halo. HI observations of the Milky Way and other nearby spirals have revealed the presence of such gas in…
We retrieve vertical and meridional variations of methane mole fraction in Titan's lower troposphere by re-analyzing near-infrared ground-based observations from 17 July 2014 UT (Adamkovics et al., 2016). We generate synthetic spectra using…
We present a study of photochemical hazes of exoplanet atmospheres based on a self-consistent model including haze microphysics, disequilibrium chemistry, and radiative feedbacks. We derive the haze properties required to match HST…
Earth's continents are characterized by a strong enrichment in long-lived radioactive isotopes. Recent estimates suggest that they contribute to 33\% of the heat released at the surface of the Earth, while occupying less than 1\% of the…
Photochemical hazes are suspected to obscure molecular features, such as water, from detection in the transmission spectra of exoplanets with atmospheric temperatures < 800 K. The opacities of laboratory produced organic compounds (tholins)…
Titan has a diverse range of materials in its atmosphere and on its surface: the simple organics that reside in various phases (gas, liquid, ice) and the solid complex refractory organics that form Titan's haze layers. These materials all…
We investigate how obliquity affects stratospheric humidity using a 3D general circulation model and find the stratosphere under high obliquity could be over 3 orders of magnitude moister than under the low obliquity equivalent, even with…