相关论文: Dust Devils on Titan

Brown dwarfs and giant gas planets are substellar objects whose spectral appearance is determined by the chemical composition of the gas and the solids/liquids in the atmosphere. Atmospheres of substellar objects possess two major scale…

Titan's middle atmosphere is currently experiencing a rapid change of season after northern spring arrived in 2009. A large cloud was observed for the first time above Titan's southern pole in May 2012, at an altitude of 300 km. This…

Lifting dust and sand into the thin Martian atmosphere is a challenging problem. Atmospheric pressure excursions within dust devils have been proposed to support lifting. We verify this idea in laboratory experiments. Pressure differences…

Transit spectroscopy is a key tool for exoplanet atmospheric characterization. However, transit spectrum observations can be limited by aerosol extinction when gas opacities are weak. The ultraviolet wavelength range contains a variety of…

Jupiter and Saturn have extended, nearly toroidal atmospheres composed of material ejected from their moons or rings. Here we suggest that similar atmospheres must exist around giant extrasolar planets and might be observable in a transit…

Cloudy atmospheres produce electric discharges, including lightning. Lightning, in turn, provides sufficient energy to break down air molecules into reactive species and thereby affects the atmospheric composition. The climate of tidally…

Saturn's moon Titan possesses stratospheric zonal winds that places it among a sparse class of planetary bodies known to have superrotation in their atmospheres. Few measurements have been made of these speeds in the upper stratosphere,…

The main purpose of this work is to perform an analysis of realistic new trajectories for a robotic mission to Saturn's largest moon, Titan, in order to demonstrate the great advantages related to the Direct Fusion Drive (DFD). The DFD is a…

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…

Electric discharges were detected directly in the cloudy atmospheres of Earth, Jupiter and Saturn, are debatable for Venus, and indirectly inferred for Neptune and Uranus in our solar system. Sprites (and other types of transient luminous…

The origin, distribution, depth and volume of lunar volatiles remain open questions. One of the possible sources of Moon's volatiles is their volcanic outgassing during the peak of lunar volcanic activity ~3.5 Ga. This same outgassing would…

Brown dwarfs are massive, giant exoplanet analogues subject to variability and colour changes, known as the L/T transition, fundamental for their thermal evolution. The drivers of the L/T transition remain elusive, with atmospheric…

The Cassini-Huygens mission has transformed our understanding of Titan from a hazy veiled moon to a place surprisingly like the Earth, with terrestrial physical processes such as wind, rainfall, and erosion shaping the landscape albeit with…

Saturn's moon Titan undergoes a long annual cycle of 29.45 Earth years. Titan's northern winter and spring were investigated in detail by the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft (2004-2017), but the northern summer season remains sparsely studied.…

Jupiter's banded appearance may appear unchanging to the casual observer, but closer inspection reveals a dynamic, ever-changing system of belts and zones with distinct cycles of activity. Identification of these long-term cycles requires…

Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is the only extraterrestrial body known to support stable liquid on its surface, in the form of seas and lakes that dot the polar regions. Many indications suggest that the liquid should be composed of a…

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…

We use numerical models, supported by our laboratory data, to predict the dust densities of ejecta outflux at any altitude within the Hill spheres of Europa and Ganymede. The ejecta are created by micrometeoroid bombardment and five…

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…

Substellar atmospheres are observed to be irregularly variable for which the formation of dust clouds is the most promising candidate explanation. The atmospheric gas is convectively unstable and, last but not least, colliding convective…