Related papers: Powerful lightning on Venus constrained by atmosph…
Uranus provides a unique laboratory to test our understanding of planetary atmospheres under extreme conditions. Multi-spectral observations from Voyager, ground-based observatories, and space telescopes have revealed a delicately banded…
Extrasolar planets appear in a chemical diversity unseen in our own solar system. Despite their atmospheres being cold, continuous and transient plasma processes do affect these atmosphere where clouds form with great efficiency. Clouds can…
Finding evidence of extraterrestrial life would be one of the most profound scientific discoveries ever made, advancing humanity into a new epoch of cosmic awareness. The Venus Life Finder (VLF) missions feature a series of three direct…
The composition of an atmosphere has integrated the geological history of the entire planetary body. However, the long-term evolutions of the atmospheres of the terrestrial planets are not well documented. For Earth, there were until…
Despite surface liquid water's importance to habitability, observationally diagnosing its presence or absence on exoplanets is still an open problem. Inspired within the Solar System by the differing sulfur cycles on Venus and Earth, we…
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…
Lightning is present in all solar system planets which form clouds in their atmospheres. Cloud formation outside our solar system is possible in objects with much higher temperatures than on Earth or on Jupiter: Brown dwarfs and giant…
The atmospheres of small exoplanets likely derive from a combination of geochemical outgassing and primordial gases left over from formation. Secondary atmospheres, such as those of Earth, Mars and Venus, are sourced by outgassing.…
The similarity of Venus and Earth in bulk properties make Venus an appealing target for future colonization. Several proposals have been put forward for colonizing and even terraforming Venus despite the extreme conditions on the planet's…
Cosmic rays bombard the lunar surface producing mesons, which attenuate inside the regolith. They get slower and decay weakly into mostly sub-GeV neutrinos leaving the surface. Thus the Moon shines in neutrinos. Here we calculate spectra of…
At visible wavelengths, Venus appears serene and pale-yellow, but since the 1920s, observers have noted high-contrast features in the ultraviolet. These features track the about 4-day superrotation of the upper cloud deck and vary widely…
Sulfur dioxide is a radiatively and chemically important trace gas in the atmosphere of Venus and its abundance at the cloud-tops has been observed to vary on interannual to decadal timescales. This variability is thought to come from…
Terrestrial exoplanets in habitable zones are ubiquitous. It is, however, unknown which have Earth-like or Venus-like climates. Distinguishing different planet-types is crucial for determining whether a planet could be habitable. We…
Venus, in the absence of an intrinsic magnetic field, undergoes a direct interaction between its ionosphere and the solar wind. Previous missions, including Mariner, Venera, and the Pioneer Venus Orbiter (PVO), reported a recurring…
Storms are emerging as key drivers in shaping hydrogen-dominated atmospheres. Trace gas condensation can suppress convection and disrupt the distribution of energy and material in hydrogen atmospheres. On Jupiter, the presence of water has…
Recently published ALMA observations suggest the presence of 20 ppb PH$_3$ in the upper clouds of Venus. This is an unexpected result, as PH$_3$ does not have a readily apparent source and should be rapidly photochemically destroyed…
In a future study of solar neutrinos a special emphasis should be given to the measurement of the fluxes of neutrinos generated in CNO cycle, because this is a direct way to measure with record uncertainty - less than 1% the contribution to…
All three terrestrial planets with atmospheres support O3 layers of some thickness. While currently only that of Earth is substantial enough to be climatically significant, we hypothesize that ancient Mars may also have supported a thick O3…
Accurate and thorough characterization of the chemistry of compounds containing the third-row elements sulfur and chlorine is critical for modeling the composition of the atmosphere of Venus. We have used a combination of ab initio quantum…
Carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen (CNO) are key elements in stellar formation and evolution, and their abundances should also have a significant impact on planetary formation and evolution. We present a detailed spectroscopic analysis of 74…