Related papers: The Dark Side of Pluto
A diurnal varying haze layer at the bright spots of Occator on dwarf planet Ceres has been reported from images of the Dawn Framing Camera. This finding is supported by ground-based observations revealing diurnal albedo changes at Occator's…
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…
We propose that astronomers will be eventually be able to discriminate between extrasolar Earth-like planets with surface oceans and those without using the shape of phase light curves in the visible and near-IR spectrum. We model the…
We propose a LSST Solar System near-Sun Survey, to be implemented during twilight hours, that extends the seasonal reach of LSST to its maximum as fresh sky is uncovered at about 50 square degrees per night (1500 sq. deg. per lunation) in…
Saturn's northern summertime hemisphere was mapped by JWST/MIRI (4.9-27.9 $\mu$m) in November 2022, tracing the seasonal evolution of temperatures, aerosols, and chemical species in the five years since the end of the Cassini mission. The…
We report observations of a stellar occultation by Pluto on 2019 July 17. A single-chord high-speed (time resolution $= 2\,$s) photometry dataset was obtained with a CMOS camera mounted on the Tohoku University 60 cm telescope (Haleakala,…
We present near-infrared broad-band polarization images of the nuclear regions of the Circinus galaxy in the J, H and K bands. For the first time the south-eastern reflection cone is detected in polarized light, which is obscured at optical…
Kinematics and photometry of the polar ring galaxy NGC 4650A, including new observations of the rotation and velocity dispersion of its central stellar disk, are used to infer the presence of a dark matter halo and to measure its shape.…
The Solar Wind Around Pluto (SWAP) instrument on NASA's New Horizon Pluto mission has collected solar wind observations en route from Earth to Pluto, and these observations continue beyond Pluto. Few missions have explored the solar wind in…
Jupiter was imaged during the Science Demonstration of the MCAO Demonstrator (MAD) at the European Southern Observatory's UT3 Very Large Telescope unit. Io and Europa were used as natural guide stars on either side of Jupiter, separated…
Mid-IR albedo values of Neptune are derived from Spitzer Space Telescope measurements reported by Stauffer et al. (2016). The method of this derivation is described and the results indicate that the geometric albedo was about 1% or less at…
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft observed (15810) 1994 JR$_1$, a 3:2 resonant Kupier Belt Object (KBO), using the LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on November 2, 2015 from a distance of 1.85 AU, and again on April 7, 2016 from a…
A link between exposures of water (H${}_{2}$O) ice with traces of an ammoniated compound (e.g., a salt) and the probable effusion of a water-rich cryolava onto the surface of Pluto has been established in previous investigations (Dalle Ore…
The transient optical source MASTER OT J072007.30+451611.6 has been recently discovered and proposed as a peculiar polar with an unusually high amplitude of the orbital brightness variation in the optical of $\sim$3 mag. To clarify its…
The dynamical structure of the phase space of the Pluto--Charon system is studied in the model of the spatial circular restricted three-body problem by using numerical methods. With the newly discovered two small satellites S/2005 P1 and…
The surprising discovery by the Rosetta spacecraft of molecular oxygen (O$_2$) in the coma of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (Bieler et al. 2015) challenged our understanding of the inventory of this volatile species on and inside bodies…
The cold dark matter scenario predicts that a large number of dark subhalos should be located within the halo of each Milky-way sized galaxy. One tell-tale signature of such dark subhalos could be additional milliarcsecond-scale image…
The weak orbital-phase dependent reflection signal of an exoplanet contains information on the planet surface, such as the distribution of continents and oceans on terrestrial planets. This light curve is usually studied in the time domain,…
The polarized and total flux of the BL Lac object PKS 2155-304 were monitored intensively and simultaneously in the optical UBVRI bands with the Turin photopolarimeter at the CASLEO 2.15 m telescope during 4 campaigns in June, August,…
Aims. We attempt to detect starlight reflected from the hot Jupiter orbiting the main-sequence star Tau Boo, in order to determine the albedo of the planetary atmosphere, the orbital inclination of the planetary system and the exact mass of…