Related papers: Venus Life Finder Mission Study
Venus, our neighboring planet, is an open-air laboratory that can be used to study why Earth and Venus evolved in such different ways. Noble gases in planetary atmospheres are tracers of their geophysical evolution, and measuring the…
This review presents an insight into our current knowledge of the atmospheres of the planets Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, the satellite Titan, and those of exoplanets. It deals with the thermal structure, aerosol…
There are a handful of spectral windows in the near-IR through which we can see down to Venus' surface on the night side of the planet. The surface of our sister planet has thus been imaged by sensors on Venus-orbiting platforms (Venus…
First identified in 2016 by JAXA's Akatsuki mission, the discontinuity/disruption is a recurrent wave observed to propagate during decades at the deeper clouds of Venus (47--56 km above the surface), while its absence at the clouds' top…
The search for life on extrasolar planets is based on the assumption that one can screen extrasolar planets for habitability spectroscopically. The first space born instruments able to detect as well as characterize extrasolar planets,…
Non-transiting terrestrial planets will be accessible by upcoming observatories of which LIFE is an example. Planet b orbiting Teegarden's Star is one of the optimal targets for such missions. We use a one-dimensional atmospheric model with…
We performed a unique Venus observation campaign to measure the disk brightness of Venus over a broad range of wavelengths in August and September 2020. The primary goal of the campaign is to investigate the absorption properties of the…
When Carl Sagan and Ed Salpeter envisioned potential Sinkers, Floaters, and Hunters living in Jupiter's clouds in 1976 (C. Sagan & E. E. Salpeter 1976), the nature of life in Earth's atmosphere remained widely unknown. Decades later,…
With the discovery of hundreds of exoplanets and a potentially huge number of Earth-like planets waiting to be discovered, the conditions for their habitability have become a focal point in exoplanetary research. The classical picture of…
Volcanism on Venus has never been directly observed, but several measurements indicate present-day activity. Volcanism could potentially play a role in climatic processes on Venus, especially in the sulfur cycle like on Earth. Observation…
The Venusian clouds originate from the binary condensation of H$_{2}$SO$_{4}$ and H$_{2}$O. The two components strongly interact with each other via chemistry and cloud formation. Previous works adopted sophisticated microphysical…
Titan, Saturn's largest moon, supports a dense atmosphere, numerous bodies of liquid on its surface, and as a richly organic world is a primary focus for understanding the processes that support the development of life. In-situ exploration…
Venus exhibits strong and changing contrasts at ultraviolet wavelengths apparently related to the clouds and the dynamics in the cloud layer, but to date their origin continues to be unknown. We investigate the nature of the UV contrasts…
Exoplanet observations promise one day to unveil the presence of extraterrestrial life. Atmospheric compounds in strong chemical disequilibrium would point to large-scale biological activity just as oxygen and methane do in the Earth's…
Stellar activity and planetary atmospheric properties have the potential to strongly influence habitability. To date, neither have been adequately studied in the multiverse context, so there has been no assessment of how these effects…
Measuring Venus' atmospheric circulation at different altitudes is important for understanding its complex dynamics, in particular the mechanisms driving the super-rotation. Observationally, Doppler imaging spectroscopy is in principle be…
At the cloud top level of Venus (65-70 km altitude) the atmosphere rotates 60 times faster than the underlying surface, a phenomenon known as superrotation. Whereas on Venus's dayside the cloud top motions are well determined and Venus…
The search for habitable conditions and signs of life on exoplanets is a major frontier in modern astronomy. Detecting atmospheric signatures of Earth-like exoplanets is challenging due to their small sizes and relatively thin atmospheres.…
Following the announcement of the detection of phosphine (PH$_3$) in the cloud deck of Venus at millimeter wavelengths, we have searched for other possible signatures of this molecule in the infrared range. Since 2012, we have been…
Thousands of planets beyond our solar system have been discovered to date, dozens of which are rocky in composition and are orbiting within the circumstellar habitable zone of their host star. The next frontier in life detection beyond our…