Related papers: Saturn's ancient regular satellites
We present the results of the two most recent (2005) XMM-Newton observations of Saturn together with the re-analysis of an earlier (2002) observation from the XMM-Newton archive and of three Chandra observations in 2003 and 2004. While the…
Motivated by the New Horizons mission, we consider how Pluto's small satellites -- currently Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra -- grow in debris from the giant impact that forms the Pluto-Charon binary. After the impact, Pluto and Charon…
Phoebe is one of the irregular satellites of Saturn; the images taken by Cassini-Huygens spacecraft allowed us to analyze its surface and the craters on it. We study the craters on Phoebe produced by Centaur objects from the Scattered Disk…
We model the primary crater production of small (D < 100 m) primary craters on Mars and the Moon using the observed annual flux of terrestrial fireballs. From the size-frequency distribution (SFD) of meteor diameters, with appropriate…
We investigate the resolved stellar content of early-type dwarf galaxies in the CenA group, in order to estimate the fraction of their intermediate-age populations. We use near-infrared photometric data taken with the VLT/ISAAC instrument,…
Establishing ages for young clusters is key for properly tracking the star formation history of a region. In this paper we investigate a new approach to estimating ages for young populations, based on the well-founded assumption that the…
During the thirteen years in orbit around Saturn before its final plunge, the Cassini spacecraft provided more than ten thousand astrometric measurements. Such large amounts of accurate data enable the search for extremely faint signals in…
HST/ACS observations along the major axis of M33 show that the mean age of its stars decreases with increasing distance from the galaxy center. Such a behavior is consistent with an inside-out growth of the disc. However, in the outermost…
The observed exoplanet population exhibits a scarcity of short-period Saturn-mass planets, a phenomenon referred to as the ``hot Saturn desert". This observational scarcity can be utilized to validate the theories regarding the formation…
Seismology allows for direct observational constraints on the interior structures of stars and planets. Recent observations of Saturn's ring system have revealed the presence of density waves within the rings excited by oscillation modes…
We have derived ages for 13 young (<30 Myr) star-forming regions and find they are up to a factor two older than the ages typically adopted in the literature. This result has wide-ranging implications, including that circumstellar discs…
Titan is the only icy satellite in the solar system with a dense atmosphere. This atmosphere is composed primarily of nitrogen with a few percent methane, which supports an active, methane-based hydrological cycle on Titan. The presence of…
Close polar and circular orbits are of great interest for the exploration of natural satellites. There are still no studies in the literature investigating orbits around Titania, the largest satellite of Uranus. In this work, we present…
The interior of Enceladus, a medium sized icy moon of Saturn hosts hydrothermal activity and exhibits tidal heating and related geyser-like activity. There are major disagreements in the existing literature on the porosity of the interior,…
Possible rotation states of two satellites of Saturn, Prometheus (S16) and Pandora (S17), are studied by means of numerical experiments. The attitude stability of all possible modes of synchronous rotation and the motion close to these…
Recent analyses have shown that the concluding stages of giant planet formation are accompanied by the development of large-scale meridional flow of gas inside the planetary Hill sphere. This circulation feeds a circumplanetary disk that…
Saturn formed beyond the snow line in the primordial solar nebula that made it possible for it to accrete a large mass. Disk instability and core accretion models have been proposed for Saturn's formation, but core accretion is favored on…
High precision photometry as performed by the CoRoT and Kepler satellites on-board instruments has allowed to detect stellar oscillations over the whole HR diagram. Oscillation frequencies are closely related to stellar interior properties…
We present a scenario for building the equatorial ridge and de-spinning Iapetus through an impact-generated disk and satellite. This impact puts debris into orbit, forming a ring inside the Roche limit and a satellite outside. This…
As it has already done for Earth, the sun, and the stars, seismology has the potential to radically change the way the interiors of giant planets are studied. In a sequence of events foreseen by only a few, observations of Saturn's rings by…