Related papers: Modeling Pluto's Minimum Pressure: Implications fo…
The nearby transiting planet HD 189733b was observed during three transits with the ACS camera of the Hubble Space Telescope in spectroscopic mode. The resulting time series of 675 spectra covers the 550-1050 nm range, with a resolution…
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…
Transit spectroscopy of terrestrial planets around nearby M dwarfs is a primary goal of space missions in coming decades. 3-D climate modeling has shown that slow-synchronous rotating terrestrial planets may develop thick clouds at the…
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).…
N2 is abundant in Pluto's atmosphere and on its surface, but the supply is depleted by prodigious atmospheric escape. We demonstrate that cometary impacts could not have delivered enough N mass to resupply Pluto's N2 atmospheric escape over…
During its departure from Pluto, New Horizons used its LORRI camera to image a portion of Pluto's southern hemisphere that was in a decades-long seasonal winter darkness, but still very faintly illuminated by sunlight reflected by Charon.…
The New Horizons spacecraft has found evidence for geologic activity on the surface of Pluto, including extensional tectonic deformation of its water ice bedrock (see Moore et al., 2016). One mechanism that could drive extensional tectonic…
Pluto's icy surface has changed colour and its atmosphere has swelled since its last closest approach to the Sun in 1989. The thin atmosphere is produced by evaporating ices, and so can also change rapidly, and in particular carbon monoxide…
We have performed three-dimensional magneto-hydrodynamical simulations of stellar accretion disks, using the PLUTO code, and studied the accretion of gas onto a Jupiter-mass planet and the structure of the circumplanetary gas flow after…
Circumgalactic gas around massive galaxies generally has a volume-filling component -- an atmosphere -- with a temperature determined by the potential-well depth of the galaxy's halo. If the atmosphere is near hydrostatic equilibrium and is…
With recent trends on miniaturizing oxide-based devices, the need for atomic-scale control of surface/interface structures by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) has increased. In particular, realizing uniform atomic termination at the…
UV auroral emissions from giant planets are produced by extra-atmospheric energetic particles interacting with an atmosphere. They have been observed on Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus and should be present on Neptune. Even if the mechanisms are…
There has been recent progress in the study of the angular momentum evolution of low mass stars (Krishnamurthi et al 1997a). Theoretical models can now be constructed which reproduce the angular momentum evolution of low mass open cluster…
The sub-Neptune GJ 1214b has an infamously flat transmission spectrum, likely due to thick aerosols in its atmosphere. A recent JWST MIRI spectroscopic phase curve of GJ 1214 b added to this picture, suggesting a highly reflective and…
Sub-Neptune exoplanets are the most abundant type of planet known today. As they do not have a Solar System counterpart, many open questions exist about their composition and formation. Previous spectroscopic studies rule out aerosol-free…
We have developed a pseudo two-dimensional model of a planetary atmosphere, which takes into account thermochemical kinetics, photochemistry, vertical mixing, and horizontal transport, the latter being modeled as a uniform zonal wind. We…
We identify a previously overlooked invariant governing planetary surface temperatures, expressed in terms of only two observables: solar irradiance and Bond albedo. The relation has universal applicability and accurately reproduces the…
The geologically active south pole of Enceladus generates a plume of micron-sized particles, which likely form Saturn's tenuous E-ring extending from the orbit of Mimas to Titan. Interactions between these particles and satellites have been…
Next year, 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft will have a close encounter with Pluto. In the present study we discuss some possibilities regarding what the spacecraft may encounter during its approach to Pluto. Among them we should include:…
The atmospheric composition of exoplanets with masses between 2 and 10 M$_\oplus$ is poorly understood. In that regard, the sub-Neptune K2-18b, which is subject to Earth-like stellar irradiation, offers a valuable opportunity for the…