Related papers: Kiladze Caldera: A Possible Cryovolcano on Pluto
In Arctic East Siberia many remains of mammoths have been found. In this region there is not sufficient sunlight over the year to allow for the growth of the plants on which these animals feed. Consequently the latitude of these regions…
Pluto's surface displays a wide variety of geologic units from smooth plains to extremely rugged mountainous expanses. These terrains range in age from young, actively resurfaced regions (no observable craters even in the highest-resolution…
The New Horizons spacecraft, which flew by Pluto on July 14, 2015, revealed the presence of haze in Pluto's atmosphere that were formed by CH4/N2 photochemistry at high altitudes in Pluto's atmosphere, as on Titan and Triton. In order to…
Jezero, an impact crater in the Syrtis Major quadrangle of Mars, is generally thought to have amassed a large body of liquid water in its ancient past. NASA spectra of the proposed paleolake interpret the youngest surface unit as…
Pluto possesses a thin atmosphere primarily composed of N2, with minor constituents including CO and CH4. Photochemical processes generate distinct haze layers as observed by the New Horizons spacecraft. However, the mechanisms governing…
Observations of the Pluto-Charon system, acquired with the ALMA interferometer on June 12-13, 2015, have yielded a detection of the CO(3-2) and HCN(4-3) rotational transitions from Pluto, providing a strong confirmation of the presence of…
Chloride-bearing deposits on Mars record high-elevation lakes during the waning stages of Mars' wet era (mid-Noachian to late Hesperian). The water source pathways, seasonality, salinity, depth, lifetime, and paleoclimatic drivers of these…
The New Horizons spacecraft has found evidence for geologic activity on the surface of Pluto, including extensional tectonic deformation of its water ice bedrock (see Moore et al., 2016). One mechanism that could drive extensional tectonic…
In models featuring extra spatial dimensions, particle collisions in the early universe can produce Kaluza-Klein gravitons. Such particles will later decay, potentially impacting the process of Big Bang nucleosynthesis. In this paper, we…
Enceladus' plume consists mainly of a mixture of water vapor and solid ice particles that may originate from a subsurface ocean. The physical processes underlying Enceladus' plume particle dynamics are still being debated, and quantifying…
Observations made during the New Horizons flyby provide a detailed snapshot of the current state of Pluto's atmosphere. While the lower atmosphere (at altitudes <200 km) is consistent with ground-based stellar occultations, the upper…
Water plumes erupting from the `tiger stripe' features on the south pole of Enceladus are thought to connect to a global subsurface ocean. Proposed origins for the initial stress necessary to form the `tiger stripes' include a giant impact,…
Next year, 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft will have a close encounter with Pluto. In the present study we discuss some possibilities regarding what the spacecraft may encounter during its approach to Pluto. Among them we should include:…
Context: Pluto possesses a thin atmosphere, primarily composed of nitrogen, in which the detection of methane has been reported. Aims: The goal is to constrain essential but so far unknown parameters of Pluto's atmosphere such as the…
Hot super Earths are exoplanets with short orbital periods ($<$ 10 days), heated by their host stars to temperatures high enough for their rocky surfaces to become molten. A few hot super Earths exhibit high geometric albedos ($>$ 0.4) in…
The subsurface ocean of Europa is a high priority target in the search for extraterrestrial life, but direct investigations are hindered by the presence of a thick, exterior ice shell. Here we present spectral line and continuum maps of…
High-resolution spectra of Pluto in the 1.66 um region, recorded with the VLT/CRIRES instrument in 2008 (2 spectra) and 2012 (5 spectra), are analyzed to constrain the spatial and vertical distribution of methane in Pluto's atmosphere and…
The Cassini mission to the Saturn system discovered a plume of ice grains and water vapor erupting from cracks on the icy surface of the satellite Enceladus. This moon has a global ocean in contact with a rocky core beneath its icy…
We examine the dynamical behavior of white light polar plume structures in the inner corona that are observed from the ground during total solar eclipses, based on their EUV hot and cool emission line counterparts observed from space. EUV…
Pit craters are circular to subcircular depressions that lack a rim and ejecta layer and typically have a conical shape. There are several mechanisms that can explain the formation of such depressions and they are associated with collapse…