Related papers: Evidence for a rapid decrease in Pluto's atmospher…

Measurements of the background intensity and polarization of the twilight sky were conducted during the "purple lights" epoch that was potentially caused by the Raikoke volcano eruption in the summer of 2019. An increase in sky brightness…

We report high precision spectrophotometric observations of four planetary transits of HD 209458, in the region of the sodium resonance doublet at 589.3 nm. We find that the photometric dimming during transit in a bandpass centered on the…

Occultations, the covering up of one celestial body by another celestial body, have been used in astronomy for millennia to learn about the sun and moon. Since 2018, VERITAS has implemented a program to detect predicted asteroid…

We review the importance of recent UV observations of solar system targets and discuss the need for further measurements, instrumentation and laboratory work in the coming decade. In the past decade, numerous important advances have been…

The method of detection of light scattering on stratospheric aerosol particles on the twilight sky background is considered. It is based on the data on sky intensity and polarization in the solar vertical at zenith distances of up to 50 deg…

Recent observations from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) indicate a moderate upward shift in the scalar spectral index $n_s$ compared to Planck $2018$, thereby placing tighter constraints on inflationary scenarios. Motivated by these…

We observed the July 17, 2017 stellar occultation of HD 168233 by the Kuiper Belt Object (486958) 2014 MU$_{69}$, the close flyby target of the extended New Horizons mission. Rather than capture a solid body occultation by the KBO itself,…

Predicting the rate of escape and thermal structure of Pluto's upper atmosphere in preparation for the New Horizons Spacecraft encounter in 2015 is important for planning and interpreting the expected measurements. Having a moderate Jeans…

The deep nitrogen-covered Sputnik Planitia (SP; informal name) basin on Pluto is located very close to the longitude of Pluto's tidal axis[1] and may be an impact feature [2], by analogy with other large basins in the solar system[3,4].…

Enceladus is a prime target in the search for life in our solar system, having an active plume likely connected to a large liquid water subsurface ocean. Using the sensitive NIRSpec instrument onboard JWST, we searched for organic compounds…

The vast, deep, volatile-ice-filled basin informally named Sputnik Planum is central to Pluto's geological activity[1,2]. Composed of molecular nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide ices[3], but dominated by N2-ice, this ice layer is…

The Kuiper belt is a remnant of the primordial Solar System. Measurements of its size distribution constrain its accretion and collisional history, and the importance of material strength of Kuiper belt objects (KBOs). Small, sub-km sized,…

In support of studies of decadal-timescale evolution of outer solar system atmospheres and ring systems, we present detailed Earth-based stellar occultation predictions for Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Titan, and Triton for 2023-2050,…

Measuring the albedo of an extrasolar planet provides insights into its atmospheric composition and its global thermal properties, including heat dissipation and weather patterns. Such a measurement requires very precise photometry of a…

We present an overview of the current status of neutrino oscillation studies at atmospheric neutrino experiments. While the current data gives some tentalising hints regarding the neutrino mass hierarchy, octant of $\theta_{23}$ and…

We present new transit and occultation times for the hot Jupiter WASP-12b. The data are compatible with a constant period derivative: $\dot{P}=-29 \pm 3$ ms yr$^{-1}$ and $P/\dot{P}= 3.2$ Myr. However, it is difficult to tell whether we…

We carried out observations, with five different instruments ranging in aperture from 0.4m to 10m, of the satellites of Uranus during that planet's 2007 Equinox. Our observations covered specific intervals of time when mutual eclipses and…

In circumstellar disks around young stars, the gravitational influence of nascent planets produces telltale patterns in density, temperature, and kinematics. To better understand these signatures, we first performed 3D hydrodynamical…

Occultations are windows of opportunity to indirectly peek into the dayside atmosphere of exoplanets. High-precision transit events provide information on the spin-orbit alignment of exoplanets around fast-rotating hosts. We aim to…

The Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation (PEPSSI) comprises the hardware and accompanying science investigation on the New Horizons spacecraft to measure pick-up ions from Pluto's outgassing atmosphere. To the extent…