Related papers: Earthshine as an Illumination Source at the Moon
This paper presents time series observations and analysis of broadband night sky airglow intensity 4 September 2018 through 30 April 2020. Data were obtained at 5 sites spanning more than 8500 km during the historically deep minimum of…
Studying lunar dust is vital to the exploration of the Moon and other airless planetary bodies. The Ultraviolet and Visible Spectrometer (UVS) on board the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft conducted a series…
Observing habitable exoplanets that may resemble Earth is a key priority in astronomy that is dependent on not only detecting such worlds, but also ascertaining that apparent signatures of habitability are not due to other sources. Space…
The variation of the solar diameter is the subject of hot debates due to the possible effect on Earth climate and also due to different interpretations of long period solar variabilities, including the total solar irradiance. We shortly…
The Sun is the primary source of energy for Earth and one of the main external drivers of its climate. Solar irradiance -- the radiative power emitted by the Sun and received at 1-AU -- varies on all observable timescales. It is measured as…
Due to stellar rotation, the observed radial velocity of a star varies during the transit of a planet across its surface, a phenomenon known as the Rossiter-McLaughlin (RM) effect. The amplitude of the RM effect is related to the radius of…
Uranus is fainter when the Sun and Earth are near its equatorial plane than when they are near the projection of its poles. The average of the absolute values of the sub-Earth and sub-Sun latitudes (referred to as the sub-latitude here) is…
A model that combines celestial geometry and atmospheric physics is used to calculate the dimming of artificial satellites as they enter and exit the Earth's shadow. Refraction of sunlight by the terrestrial atmosphere can illuminate a…
Saturn's ionosphere is produced when the otherwise neutral atmosphere is exposed to a flow of energetic charged particles or solar radiation. At low latitudes the latter should result in a weak planet-wide glow in infrared (IR),…
For terrestrial exoplanets with thin atmospheres or no atmospheres, the surface contributes light to the reflected light signal of the planet. Measurement of the variety of disk-integrated brightnesses of bodies in the Solar System and the…
Neutrino production of radio Cherenkov signals in the Moon is the object of radio telescope observations. Depending on the energy range and detection parameters, the dominant contribution to the neutrino signal may come from interactions of…
Transmission spectroscopy of exoplanets is a tool to characterize rocky planets and explore their habitability. Using the Earth itself as a proxy, we model the atmospheric cross section as a function of wavelength, and show the effect of…
The solar wind plasma from the Sun interacts with the Moon, generating a wake structure behind it, since the Moon is to a good approximation an insulator, has no intrinsic magnetic field and a very thin atmosphere. The lunar wake in…
Beyond Earth-like planets, moons can be habitable, too. No exomoons have been securely detected, but they could be extremely abundant. Young Jovian planets can be as hot as late M stars, with effective temperatures of up to 2000 K. Transits…
The origins of the lunar magnetic anomalies and swirls have long puzzled scientists.The prevailing theory posits that an ancient lunar dynamo core field magnetized extralunar meteoritic materials, leading to the current remnant magnetic…
It will be shown that the rotation of the Earth in the Earth-Moon system can be detected by comparing the deflection of a Foucault pendulum at noon on the one hand and at midnight on the other hand. More precisely, on 21 June the midnight…
Earth's deciduous plants have a sharp order-of-magnitude increase in leaf reflectance between approximately 700 and 750 nm wavelength. This strong reflectance of Earth's vegetation suggests that surface biosignatures with sharp spectral…
Clouds affected by solar eclipses could influence the reflection of sunlight back into space and might change local precipitation patterns. Satellite cloud retrievals have so far not taken into account the lunar shadow, hindering a reliable…
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…
This paper presents multi-filter measurements of the night sky brightness at the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) in Sutherland in the presence of a bright moon. The observations cover a wide range of sky directions, lunar…