Search Publications
Volcanism on farside of the Moon: New evidence from Antoniadi in South Pole Aitken basin
Senthil Kumar, P.; Sruthi, U.
The lunar surface is characterized by asymmetric distribution of its volcanic deposits. The nearside contains about 90% of the mare basalts, while there are a few on the farside with some are in the South Pole Aitken (SPA) basin, which is the largest and oldest impact basin on the Moon. Although the mare volcanism on the nearside of the Moon has b…
Minerals detection for hyperspectral images using adapted linear unmixing: LinMin
Schmidt, Frédéric; Legendre, Maxime; Le Mouëlic, Stéphane
Minerals detection over large volume of spectra is the challenge addressed by current hyperspectral imaging spectrometer in Planetary Science. Instruments such OMEGA (Mars Express), CRISM (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter), M3 (Chandrayaan-1), VIRTIS (Rosetta) and many more, have been producing very large datasets since one decade. We propos…
Multiple asteroid systems (45) Eugenia and (87) Sylvia: Sensitivity to external and internal perturbations
Marchis, F.; Beauvalet, L.
Satellites of asteroids are a widely used way to determine the masses and other dynamical parameters of their systems. We make such a determination here, using data from the two triple-asteroid systems, (45) Eugenia and (87) Sylvia, that come from the Hubble Space Telescope and adaptive optics on three 8-10 m class telescopes (Keck, VLT, Gemini No…
CH4 mixing ratios at microbar pressure levels of Jupiter as constrained by 3-micron ISO data
Moses, J. I.; Sim, C. K.; Kim, Sang J. +1 more
Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) data of Jupiter are revisited in order to derive CH4 mixing ratios at microbar pressures in the atmosphere. We utilize the most updated radiative transfer programs to construct a 3-µm emission model of CH4 to be compared with the ISO data. From the model-data comparisons, we derive the h…
Saturn’s F Ring core: Calm in the midst of chaos
Scargle, J. D.; Showalter, M. R.; Colwell, J. E. +5 more
The long-term stability of the narrow F Ring core has been hard to understand. Instead of acting as “shepherds”, Prometheus and Pandora together stir the vast preponderance of the region into a chaotic state, consistent with the orbits of newly discovered objects like S/2004 S 6. We show how a comb of very narrow radial locations of high stability…
First far-ultraviolet disk-integrated phase curve analysis of Mimas, Tethys and Dione from the Cassini-UVIS data sets
Hendrix, Amanda R.; Royer, Emilie M.
We perform an analysis of the photometric properties of the icy saturnian satellites at 180 nm, based on the first far-UV disk-integrated phase curves of Mimas, Tethys and Dione. Their interactions with the environment (the E-ring and the magnetosphere) are investigated, leading to a better understanding of the effects of exogenic processes on the…
Dayglow and auroral emissions of Uranus in H2 FUV bands
Lamy, L.; Roueff, E.; Cessateur, G. +7 more
Following the recent detection of an auroral signal on Uranus (Lamy et al. [2012]. Geophys. Res. Lett. 39, 7105) during HST/STIS observation performed in November 2011, we analyzed the associated HST/STIS FUV spectral images obtained in 2011 and 2012. Our purpose was to extract any possible H2 emission produced in the upper atmosphere o…
Modeling the SAR backscatter of linear dunes on Earth and Titan
Le Gall, A.; Bernard, D.; Radebaugh, J. +3 more
We modeled the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) response of linear dunes of the Great Sand Sea in Egypt using a single surface scattering term, based on Integral Equation and Physical Optics Models. Using multi-frequency SIR-C/X-SAR radar scenes and topography obtained from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), we were able to estimate reason…
Constraining the depth of Saturn’s zonal winds by measuring thermal and gravitational signals
Fletcher, Leigh N.; Liu, Junjun; Schneider, Tapio
Based on straightforward dynamical considerations, we show how available and upcoming measurements of Saturn’s thermal and gravitational signals can be used to constrain the depth to which its zonal winds penetrate. The dynamical considerations issue from the facts that Saturn has a strong intrinsic heat flux, rotates rapidly, and has negligible a…
Latitudinal structure of the Venus O2 infrared airglow: A signature of small-scale dynamical processes in the upper atmosphere
Drossart, P.; Piccioni, G.; Gérard, J. -C. +1 more
Images of the nightside limb of Venus have been obtained in the northern hemisphere with the VIRTIS multispectral infrared imager on board Venus Express between April 2006 and October 2008. We analyze the latitudinal distribution of the O2(a1Δ) airglow limb profiles at 1.27 µm to characterize its distribution and variab…