Related papers: Ice Giant System Exploration in the 2020s: An Intr…
In the near future we will have ground- and space-based telescopes that are designed to observe and characterize Earth-like planets. While attention is focused on exoplanets orbiting main sequence stars, more than 150 exoplanets have…
Stochastic impacts by large bodies are, at present, the usually accepted mechanisms able to account for the obliquity of the ice giants. We attempt to set constraints on giant impacts as the cause of Neptune's current obliquity in the…
The Large UV/Optical/Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR) mission is one of four Decadal Survey Mission Concepts studied by NASA in preparation for the US National Academies' Astro2020 Decadal Survey. This observatory has the major goal of…
The field of exoplanetary science has emerged over the past two decades, rising up alongside traditional solar system planetary science. Both fields focus on understanding the processes which form and sculpt planets through time, yet there…
Our understanding of the processes that are relevant to the formation and maintenance of habitable planetary systems is advancing at a rapid pace, both from observation and theory. The present review focuses on recent research that bears on…
Long range observations in the field of astronomy have opened up our understanding of the Solar System, the Galaxy and the wider Universe. In this paper we discuss the idea of direct in-situ reconnaissance of nearby stellar systems, using…
Until 2013, only the giant planets were known to host ring systems. In June 2013, a stellar occulation revealed the presence of narrow and dense rings around Chariklo, a small Centaur object that orbits between Saturn and Uranus. Meanwhile,…
The Large UV/Optical/Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR) mission is one of four Decadal Survey Mission Concepts studied by NASA in preparation for the US National Academies' Astro2020 Decadal Survey. This observatory has the major goal of…
The sample of known exoplanets is strongly biased to masses larger than the ones of the giant gaseous planets of the solar system. Recently, the discovery of two extrasolar planets of considerably lower masses around the nearby stars GJ 436…
The IceCube observatory located at the South Pole is a cubic-kilometre optical Cherenkov telescope primarily designed for the detection of high-energy astrophysical neutrinos. IceCube became fully operational in 2010, after a seven-year…
The origin of the high inclination of Uranus' spin-axis (Uranus' obliquity) is one of the great unanswered questions about the Solar system. Giant planets are believed to form with nearly zero obliquity, and it has been shown that the…
One of the most exciting scientific challenges is to detect Earth-like planets in the habitable zones of other stars in the galaxy and search for evidence of life. The ability to observe and characterise dozens of potentially Earth-like…
This chapter reviews the most recent advancements on the topic of terrestrial and giant planet interiors, including Solar System and extrasolar objects. Starting from an observed mass-radius diagram for known planets in the Universe, we…
The recent observation by the IceCube neutrino observatory of an astrophysical flux of neutrinos represents the "first light" in the nascent field of neutrino astronomy. The observed diffuse neutrino flux seems to suggest a much larger…
A new family of planets is considered which is between rochy terrestrial planets and gaseous giant ones: "Ocean-Planets". We present the possible formation, composition and internal models of these putative planets, including that of their…
The ARIEL (Atmospheric Remote-sensing Exoplanet Large-survey) mission concept is one of the three M4 mission candidates selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) for a Phase A study, competing for a launch in 2026. ARIEL has been designed…
The study of planetary atmospheres is critical to our understanding of the origin and evolution of the Solar System. The combined effect of various physical and chemical processes over billions of years have resulted in a variety of…
Understanding the climates of terrestrial exoplanets and the detectability of biosignatures is an inherently interdisciplinary challenge, requiring the integration of insights from Solar System exploration, exoplanet observations and…
A statistical study of the environment around Polar Ring Galaxies is presented. Two kinds of search are performed: 1) a study of the concentration and diameters of all the objects surrounding the Polar Rings, within a search field 5 times…
The National Academy Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Science (CAPS) made a recommendation to study a large/medium-class dedicated space telescope for planetary science, going beyond the Discovery-class dedicated planetary space…