Related papers: Revealing Giant Planet Interiors Beneath the Cloud…
New equations of state (EOS) for hydrogen, helium, and compounds containing heavier elements are used to construct models for the structures of the planets Jupiter and Saturn. Good agreement with the gravitational moments J2 and J4 is…
We present a review of Saturn's interior structure and thermal evolution, with a particular focus on work in the past 5 years. Data from the Cassini mission, including a precise determination of the gravity field from the Grand Finale…
While Jupiter's massive gas envelope consists mainly of hydrogen and helium, the key to understanding Jupiter's formation and evolution lies in the distribution of the remaining (heavy) elements. Before the Juno mission, the lack of…
The best constraints on the internal structures of giant planets have historically come from measurements of their gravity fields. These gravity data are inherently mostly sensitive to a planet's outer regions, providing only loose…
The search for habitable planets like Earth around other stars fulfils an ancient imperative to understand our origins and place in the cosmos. The past decade has seen the discovery of hundreds of planets, but nearly all are gas giants…
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…
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,…
This white paper examines the benefit of the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope for studies of the Solar System's four giant planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. JWST's superior sensitivity, combined with high spatial and…
This chapter summarizes our current understanding of the ionosphere of Saturn. We give an overview of Saturn ionospheric science from the Voyager era to the present, with a focus on the wealth of new data and discoveries enabled by Cassini,…
Spectroscopic transiting observations of the atmospheres of hot Jupiters around other stars, first with Hubble Space Telescope and then Spitzer, opened the door to compositional studies of exoplanets. The James Webb Space Telescope will…
Uranus provides a unique laboratory to test our understanding of planetary atmospheres under extreme conditions. Multi-spectral observations from Voyager, ground-based observatories, and space telescopes have revealed a delicately banded…
Tidal dissipation in planetary interiors is one of the key physical mechanisms that drive the evolution of star-planet and planet-moon systems. New constraints are now obtained both in the Solar and exoplanetary systems. Tidal dissipation…
The Cassini spacecraft made a gravity assist flyby of Jupiter in December 2000. The Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) acquired images of the planet that covered the visual range with filters sensitive to the distribution of clouds and hazes,…
Recent observations of Jupiter and Saturn provided by spacecraft missions, such as Juno and Cassini, compel us to revise and improve our models of giant planet interiors. Even though hydrogen and helium are by far the dominant species in…
Earth and Titan are two planetary bodies formed far from each other. Nevertheless the chemical composition of their atmospheres exhibits common indications of being produced by the accretion, plus ulterior in-situ processing of cometary…
This white paper advocates for the inclusion of small, captured Outer Solar system objects, found in the Ice Giant region in the next Decadal Survey. These objects include the Trojans and Irregular satellite populations of Uranus and…
The Juno mission has revolutionized and challenged our understanding of Jupiter. As Juno transitioned to its extended mission, we review the major findings of Jupiter's internal structure relevant to understanding Jupiter's formation and…
'Empirical' models (pressure vs. density) of Uranus and Neptune interiors constrained by the gravitational coefficients J_2, J_4, the planetary radii and masses, and Voyager solid-body rotation periods are presented. The empirical…
The purpose of this document is to discuss the scientific case of a space mission to the ice giants Uranus and Neptune and their satellite systems and its relevance to advance our understanding of the ancient past of the Solar System and,…
We compute grids of radiative-convective model atmospheres for Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune over a range of intrinsic fluxes and surface gravities. The atmosphere grids serve as an upper boundary condition for models of the thermal…