Related papers: Atmospheric Electricity at the Ice Giants
The aurorae of Uranus were recently detected in the far ultraviolet with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) providing a new, so far unique, means to remotely study the asymmetric Uranian magnetosphere from Earth. We analyze here two new HST…
Post equinox imaging of Uranus by HST, Keck, and Gemini telescopes has enabled new measurements of winds over previously sampled latitudes as well as measurements at high northern latitudes that have recently come into better view. These…
Molecular clouds act as targets for cosmic rays (CR), revealing their presence through either gamma-ray emission due to proton-proton interactions, and/or through the ionization level in the cloud, produced by the CR flux. The ionization…
Storms are emerging as key drivers in shaping hydrogen-dominated atmospheres. Trace gas condensation can suppress convection and disrupt the distribution of energy and material in hydrogen atmospheres. On Jupiter, the presence of water has…
We explored two aspects of the problem of characterizing cool extrasolar giant planets in scattered optical light with a space based coronagraph. First, for a number of the known radial velocity (RV) giants we computed traditional forward…
Uranus and Neptune share properties that are distinct from the other giant planets in the solar system, but they are also distinct from one another, particularly in their relative internal heat flux. Not only does Neptune emit about ten…
Certain forms of solar wind transients contain significant enhancements of dynamic pressure and may effectively drive magnetosphere dynamics, including substorms and storms. An integral element of such driving is the generation of a wide…
Neutrino astronomy saw its birth with the discovery by IceCube of a diffuse flux at energies above 60 TeV with intensity comparable to a predicted upper limit to the flux from extra-galactic sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays…
The ATLAS detector is intended to verify the standard model and to search for new physics at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC, CERN). In addition to this primary goal, it also allows detection of muons of cosmic rays. On the other hand,…
Ground-based and spacecraft telescopic observations, combined with an intensive modeling effort, have greatly enhanced our understanding of hot giant planets and brown dwarfs over the past ten years. Although these objects are all fluid,…
Layer clouds are abundant in the Earth's atmosphere. Such clouds do not become sufficiently strongly charged to generate lightning, but they show weak charging along the upper and lower cloud boundaries where there is a conductivity…
The discovery of the second equatorial ionized stellar wind from a massive young stellar object is reported. High resolution radio continuum maps of S140 IRS 1 reveal a highly elongated source that is perpendicular to the larger scale…
A recent study pointed out that macroscopic dark matter (macros) traversing through the earth's atmosphere can give rise to hot and ionized channels similar to those associated with lightning leaders. The authors of the study investigated…
For ground-based gravitational wave (GW) detectors, lightning strokes in the atmosphere are sources of environmental noise. Some GW detectors are built or planned in underground facilities, and knowledge of how lightning strokes affect them…
Brown dwarfs and giant gas extrasolar planets have cold atmospheres with a rich chemical compositions from which mineral cloud particles form. Their properties, like particle sizes and material composition, vary with height, and the mineral…
Cosmic ray showers interacting with the resonant mass gravitational wave antenna NAUTILUS have been detected. The experimental results show large signals at a rate much greater than expected. The largest signal corresponds to an energy…
The Pierre Auger Observatory is the world's largest operating detection system for the observation of ultra high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs). The detector allows detailed measurements of their energy spectrum, mass composition and arrival…
Unexpected dynamic phenomena have surprised solar system observers in the past and have led to important discoveries about solar system workings. Observations at the initial stages of these events provide crucial information on the physical…
Since its discovery in the aurorae of Jupiter ~30 years ago, the H$_{3}^{+}$ ion has served as an invaluable probe of giant planet upper atmospheres. However, the vast majority of monitoring of planetary H$_{3}^{+}$ radiation has followed…
We show that atmospheric electric fields may affect the cosmic ray observations in several ways and may lead to an overestimation of the cosmic ray energies. The electric field in thunderclouds can be as high as a few kV/cm. This field can…