Related papers: Decoding planetary surfaces by counting cracks
A planetary mass scale and a system of composition codes are presented for describing the geophysical characteristics of exoplanets and Solar System planets, dwarf planets, and spherical moons. The composition classes characterize the rock,…
Among the growing list of confirmed exoplanets, the number of planets identified in dense star clusters remains sparse. Previous analyses have suggested this may be due in part to dynamical interactions that unbind large fractions of…
Craters are one of the most prominent features on planetary surfaces, used in applications such as age estimation, hazard detection, and spacecraft navigation. Crater detection is a challenging problem due to various aspects, including…
Remarkably persistent mixing and non-mixing regions (islands) are observed to coexist in a three-dimensional dynamical system where randomness is expected. The track of an x-ray opaque particle in a spherical shell half-filled with dry…
Debris disks are the dust disks found around ~20% of nearby main sequence stars in far-IR surveys. They can be considered as descendants of protoplanetary disks or components of planetary systems, providing valuable information on…
Photometric variation of a directly imaged planet contains information on both the geography and spectra of the planetary surface. We propose a novel technique that disentangles the spatial and spectral information from the multi-band…
We test and simulate the mesoscopic cracking behavior of specimens made of a standard concrete mixture. To this end, we combine stable wedge-splitting fracture experiments performed during X-ray tomography, their analysis with digital…
Mahdavi et al. find that the degree of agreement between weak lensing and X-ray mass measurements is a function of cluster radius. Numerical simulations also point out that X-ray mass proxies do not work equally well at all radii. The…
A large number of systems harboring a debris disk show evidence for a double belt architecture. One hypothesis for explaining the gap between the belts is the presence of one or more planets dynamically carving it. This work aims to…
Models of planet formation are built on underlying physical processes. In order to make sense of the origin of the planets we must first understand the origin of their building blocks. This review comes in two parts. The first part presents…
Recent ALMA observations discovered consequent amounts (i.e., up to a few $10^{-1}\; \rm M_\oplus$) of CO gas in debris disks that were expected to be gas-free. This gas is in general estimated to be mostly composed of CO, C, and O (i.e.,…
Earthshine observations offer a unique opportunity to study Earth as an exoplanet seen from the Moon. As the Sun-Earth-Moon geometry changes, Earth can be observed as a spatially unresolved exoplanet at different phase angles, providing…
Planned missions will spatially resolve temperate terrestrial planets from their host star. Although reflected light from such a planet encodes information about its surface, it has not been shown how to establish surface characteristics of…
Planet formation models are now often considering the formation of planetary systems, with more than one planet per system. This raises the question of how to represent planetary systems in a convenient way, (e.g. for visualisation purpose)…
Straight cracks are observed in thin coatings under residual tensile stress, resulting into the classical network pattern observed in china crockery, old paintings or dry mud. Here, we present a novel fracture mechanism where delamination…
Planets can carve gaps in the surface density of protoplanetary discs. The formation of these gaps can reduce the corotation torques acting on the planets. In addition, gaps can halt the accretion of solids onto the planets as dust and…
The automatic identification of planetary feature names in astronomy publications presents numerous challenges. These features include craters, defined as roughly circular depressions resulting from impact or volcanic activity; dorsas,…
Ice-rich planets are formed exterior to the water ice-line and thus are expected to contain a substantial amount of ices. The high ice content leads to unique conditions in the interior, under which the structure of a planet is affected by…
Since the first microlensing planet discovery in 2003, more than 200 planets have been detected with gravitational microlensing, in addition to several free-floating planet and black hole candidates. In this chapter the microlensing theory…
Finding and properly segmenting cracks in images of concrete is a challenging task. Cracks are thin and rough and being air filled do yield a very weak contrast in 3D images obtained by computed tomography. Enhancing and segmenting dark…