Search Publications
Moderate D/H ratios in methane ice on Eris and Makemake as evidence of hydrothermal or metamorphic processes in their interiors: Geochemical analysis
Grundy, William M.; Lunine, Jonathan I.; Glein, Christopher R. +7 more
Dwarf planets Eris and Makemake have surfaces bearing methane ice of unknown origin. This ice can provide important insights into the origin and evolution of volatiles in the outer solar system. Deuterium/hydrogen (D/H) ratios were recently determined from James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations of Eris and Makemake (Grundy et al., 2024b), …
A study of Jupiter's UV Great Dark Spot and tropopause to stratosphere winds in the high northern latitudes as seen by Cassini imaging
West, R. A.; Sinclair, J. A.; Del Genio, A. D. +1 more
Images of Jupiter taken during the year 2000 Cassini flyby revealed the early stages and evolution of a high northern-latitude UV Great Dark Spot over a three-month period. They also provided a window on the circulation of Jupiter's polar stratosphere. Jupiter's rarely-detected UV Great Dark Spot (UVGDS) is unusual in several respects. It is an ep…
Revised upper limits for abundances of NH3, HCN and HC3N in the Martian atmosphere
Montmessin, F.; Korablev, O.; Fedorova, A. A. +7 more
The Atmospheric Chemistry Suite (ACS) onboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) spacecraft has been studying Mars' atmosphere since 2018. The sensitivity of the middle infrared channel (MIR) allows it to address many ardent topics and it is capable of improving and establishing upper limits for many trace species. In this work we present analysi…
Novel quantitative methods to enable multispectral identification of high-purity water ice exposures on Mars using High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) images
Munaretto, G.; Dundas, C. M.; Seelos, F. P. +8 more
Reliable detection and characterization of water ice on the Martian surface is pivotal to not only understand its present and past climate, but to also provide valuable information on in-situ resource availability and distribution for future human exploration missions. Ice-rich features are currently identified with visible/near-IR (VNIR), thermal…
Insight from the Noachian-aged fractured crust to the volcanic evolution of Mars: A case study from the Thaumasia graben and Claritas Fossae
Hauber, Ernst; Stephan, Katrin; Pieterek, Bartosz +1 more
Although most of the large volcanic landforms on Mars have been extensively studied, this is not the case for kilometer-sized landforms whose origin remains uncertain and which might provide important insights into the evolution of Martian volcanism. Previously, different populations of small-scale putative scoria cone volcanoes have been describe…
Sublimation and infrared spectral properties of ammonium cyanide
Gerakines, Perry A.; Yarnall, Yukiko Y.; Hudson, Reggie L.
The ammonium ion (NH4+) has been suggested to be present in interstellar ices and has been observed on the surfaces of planetary bodies using infrared (IR) spectroscopy as the primary means of identification. Evidence for several ammonium salts has also been found in the dust and surface ices of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenk…
First holistic modelling of meteoroid ablation and fragmentation: A case study of the Orionids recorded by the Canadian Automated Meteor Observatory
Vida, Denis; Brown, Peter G.; Campbell-Brown, Margaret +1 more
18 mm-sized Orionid meteoroids were captured in 2019 and 2020 by the Canadian Automated Observatory's mirror tracking system. Meteor position measurements were made to an accuracy of ∼1m and the meteors were tracked to a limiting magnitude of about + 7 . 5 at the faintest point. The trajectory estimation shows the intrinsic physical dispersion of …
Possibly seismically triggered avalanches after the S1222a Marsquake and S1000a impact event
Rodriguez, S.; Lognonné, P.; Perrin, C. +9 more
Ground motion from seismic events detected by the SEIS/InSight seismometer on Mars could potentially trigger dust avalanches. Our research strongly suggests that the seismic event S1000a may have triggered a significant number of dust avalanches. In contrast, following the seismic event S1222a, there was only a modest increase in avalanche occurre…
Glacial sculpting of a martian cratered landscape on the northeastern flank of the Hellas basin
Moore, Jeffrey M.; Wilson, Sharon A.; Howard, Alan D. +2 more
The interiors and exteriors of the >25 km diameter Batson, Nako, Salkhad, and Jori craters (and McCauley crater to a lesser degree) on the northeastern rim of Hellas basin, Mars, were extensively modified by glacio-fluvial and glacio-lacustrine activity during the Middle and Late Amazonian, from some time before 1.4 Ga to the present as reveale…
Lunar elemental abundances as derived from Chandrayaan-2
Bhatt, M.; Narendranath, S.; Pillai, Netra S. +6 more
The distribution of Mg, Al, Si, Ca and Fe on the lunar surface are important to understand the petrological characteristics of the Moon and its geological evolution. We derived new elemental distribution maps using the Chandrayaan-2 Large Area Soft X-ray Spectrometer (CLASS) experiment onboard the Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter. These are the first set of …