Related papers: A youthful Titan implied by improved impact simula…
Impact crater counts on the Saturnian satellites are a key element for estimating their surface ages and placing constraints on their impactor population. The Cassini mission radar observations allowed crater counts to be made on the…
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…
As the only icy satellite with a thick atmosphere and liquids on its surface, Titan represents a unique end-member to study the impact cratering process. Unlike craters on other Saturnian satellites, Titan's craters are preferentially…
Are Saturn's regular satellites young or old? And how old are Enceladus' cratered plains? To answer these questions we computed model surface ages of the most heavily cratered terrains on Saturn's regular icy satellites using new…
Titan's polar surface is dotted with hundreds of lacustrine depressions. Based on the hypothesis that they are karstic in origin, we aim at determining the efficiency of surface dissolution as a landshaping process on Titan, in a…
Titan, Saturn's largest moon, has a plethora of organic compounds in the atmosphere and on the surface that interact with each other. Cryominerals such as co-crystals may influence the geologic processes and chemical composition of Titan's…
Several clues indicate that Titan's atmosphere has been depleted in methane during some period of its history, possibly as recently as 0.5-1 billion years ago. It could also happen in the future. Under these conditions, the atmosphere…
The observations of the surfaces of the mid sized Saturnian satellites made by Cassini Huygens mission have shown a variety of features that allows study of the processes that took place and are taking place on those worlds. Research of the…
The surface of Saturn's moon Titan is coated with small molecule organic solids termed cryominerals. Cryominerals play an analogous role to minerals on Earth in Titan's surface geology and geochemistry. To develop a predictive understanding…
I report the results of a new set of calculations for the gravitational contraction of the proto-solar cloud to quantify the idea that Titan may be a captured moon of Saturn (Prentice 1981, 1984). It is proposed that Titan initially…
We investigate the effects of varying Saturn's orbit on the atmospheric circulation and surface methane distribution of Titan. Using a new general circulation model of Titan's atmosphere, we simulate its climate under four characteristic…
The origin of Saturn's rings has been debated for decades. Measurements from Voyager and Cassini have suggested that the rings could be as young as ~100 Myr and composed of nearly pure water ice. Several scenarios have been proposed to…
At the end of the Cassini mission, Saturn's rings have been claimed to be spectacularly young compared to the age of the Solar System: their unusual ice-rich composition corresponds to initially pure ice rings polluted by interplanetary…
The existence of possible early oceans in the northern hemisphere of Mars has been researched and debated for decades. The nature of the early martian climate is still somewhat mysterious, but evidence for one or more early oceans implies…
Data from the New Horizons mission to Pluto show no craters on Sputnik Planum down to the detection limit (2 km for low resolution data, 625 m for high resolution data). The number of small Kuiper Belt Objects that should be impacting Pluto…
The small ($\le$ 135 km mean radius) saturnian satellites are closely related to the rings and together they constitute a complex dynamical system where formation and destruction mechanisms compete against each other. We model the cratering…
Saturn's moon Titan is the only extraterrestrial body known to host stable lakes and a hydrological cycle. Titan's lakes predominantly contain liquid methane, ethane, and nitrogen, with methane evaporation driving its hydrological cycle.…
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…
We constructed a 6-degrees of freedom rotational model of Titan as a 3-layer body consisting of a rigid core, a fluid global ocean, and a floating ice shell. The ice shell exhibits partially-compensated lateral thickness variations in order…
Numerous geological features that could be evaporitic in origin have been identified on the surface of Titan. Although they seem to be water-ice poor, their main properties -chemical composition, thickness, stratification- are essentially…