Related papers: Extra-Terrestrial Meteors
Space weather is among the most powerful and least understood forces shaping planetary atmospheres. In our Solar System, we observe its effects directly: atmospheric escape, chemical disruption, and spectacular auroral displays. Yet for…
We have examined the fate of impact ejecta liberated from the surface of Mercury due to impacts by comets or asteroids, in order to study (1) meteorite transfer to Earth, and (2) re-accumulation of an expelled mantle in giant-impact…
Space Weather is the study of the conditions in the solar wind that can affect life on the surface of the Earth, particularly the increasingly technologically sophisticated devices that are part of modern life. Solar radio observations are…
The observation of gaseous giant planets is of high scientific interest. Although they have been the targets of several spacecraft missions, there still remains a need for continuous ground-based observations. As their atmospheres present…
The fates of planetary systems provide unassailable insights into their formation and represent rich cross-disciplinary dynamical laboratories. Mounting observations of post-main-sequence planetary systems necessitate a complementary level…
The Kepler era of exoplanetary discovery has presented the Astronomical community with a cornucopia of planetary systems very different from the one which we inhabit. It has long been known that Jupiter plays a major role in the orbital…
Magnetic interactions between a planet and its environment are known to lead to aurorae and shocks in the solar system. The large number of close-in exoplanets that have been discovered so far triggered a renewed interest in understanding…
Although current sensitivity limits are such that true Solar System analogs remain challenging to detect, numerous planetary systems have been discovered that are very different from our own Solar System. The majority of systems harbor a…
Recent observations have confirmed the existence of rings around minor bodies in the outer Solar System. These objects may possess satellites as well. Here we analytically investigate the interaction between such rings and satellites. We…
Circumstellar debris disks are the extrasolar analogues of the asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt. They consist of comets and leftover planetesimals that continuously collide and produce circumstellar dust that can be observed as infrared…
In the last 15 years, since the discovery of the first low-mass planets beyond the solar system, there has been tremendous progress in understanding the diversity of (super-)Earth and sub-Neptune exoplanets. Especially the influence of the…
For much of February 2023, the world was in panic as repeated balloon-like unidentified flying objects (UFOs) were reported over numerous countries by governments that often responded with military action. As a result, most of these craft…
Space weather in exoplanetary systems, driven by transient stellar emissions such as flares, coronal mass ejections, and stellar proton events, can significantly influence planetary habitability and the long-term evolution of atmospheres.…
For many years, it was assumed that Jupiter prevented the Earth from being subject to a punishing impact regime that would greatly hinder the development of life. Here, we present the 4th in a series of studies investigating this…
In the last few years astronomical surveys have expanded the reach of planetary science into the realm of small and dense extrasolar worlds. These share a number of characteristics with the terrestrial and icy planetary objects of the Solar…
<Abridged> The impact of a meteoroid onto an asteroid transfers linear and angular momentum to the larger body, which may affect its orbit and its rotational state. Here we show that the meteoroid environment of our Solar System can have an…
The hundreds of exoplanets that have been discovered in the past two decades offer a new perspective on planetary structure. Instead of being the archetypal examples of planets, those of our Solar System are merely possible outcomes of…
To characterize the meteoroid environment around Mercury and its contribution to the planet's exosphere, we combined four distinctive sources of meteoroids in the solar system: main-belt asteroids, Jupiter family comets, Halley-type comets,…
We investigate the electromagnetic signals accompanied with planetary collisions and their event rate, and explore the possibility of directly detecting such events. A typical Earth--Jupiter collision would give rise to a prompt…
We review several aspects of the calculation of exoplanet model atmospheres in the current era, with a focus on understanding the temperature-pressure profiles of atmospheres and their emitted spectra. Most of the focus is on gas giant…