Search Publications
Detection of phosphates originating from Enceladus's ocean
Postberg, Frank; Sekine, Yasuhito; Glein, Christopher R. +13 more
Saturn's moon Enceladus harbours a global1 ice-covered water ocean2,3. The Cassini spacecraft investigated the composition of the ocean by analysis of material ejected into space by the moon's cryovolcanic plume4-9. The analysis of salt-rich ice grains by Cassini's Cosmic Dust Analyzer10 enabled inferenc…
Water in the terrestrial planet-forming zone of the PDS 70 disk
Waters, L. B. F. M.; Olofsson, G.; Abergel, A. +42 more
Terrestrial and sub-Neptune planets are expected to form in the inner (less than 10 AU) regions of protoplanetary disks1. Water plays a key role in their formation2-4, although it is yet unclear whether water molecules are formed in situ or transported from the outer disk5,6. So far Spitzer Space Telescope observat…
Vanadium oxide and a sharp onset of cold-trapping on a giant exoplanet
Kesseli, Aurora Y.; Kasper, David; Bean, Jacob L. +15 more
The abundance of refractory elements in giant planets can provide key insights into their formation histories1. Owing to the low temperatures of the Solar System giants, refractory elements condense below the cloud deck, limiting sensing capabilities to only highly volatile elements2. Recently, ultra-hot giant exoplanets have…
Methane throughout the atmosphere of the warm exoplanet WASP-80b
Fortney, Jonathan J.; Boyer, Martha L.; Bell, Taylor J. +12 more
The abundances of main carbon- and oxygen-bearing gases in the atmospheres of giant exoplanets provide insights into atmospheric chemistry and planet formation processes1,2. Thermochemistry suggests that methane (CH4) should be the dominant carbon-bearing species below about 1,000 K over a range of plausible atmospheric compo…
Stellar initial mass function varies with metallicity and time
Tian, Hao; Fu, Xiaoting; Li, Jiadong +4 more
Most structural and evolutionary properties of galaxies strongly rely on the stellar initial mass function (IMF), namely the distribution of the stellar mass formed in each episode of star formation1-4. The IMF shapes the stellar population in all stellar systems, and so has become one of the most fundamental concepts of modern astronom…
Formation of the methyl cation by photochemistry in a protoplanetary disk
Gordon, Karl D.; Martin-Drumel, Marie-Aline; Onaka, Takashi +53 more
Forty years ago, it was proposed that gas-phase organic chemistry in the interstellar medium can be initiated by the methyl cation CH3+ (refs. 1-3), but so far it has not been observed outside the Solar System4,5. Alternative routes involving processes on grain surfaces have been invoked6,7. H…
Spatial variations in aromatic hydrocarbon emission in a dust-rich galaxy
Hutchison, Taylor A.; Rigby, Jane R.; Whitaker, Katherine E. +36 more
Dust grains absorb half of the radiation emitted by stars throughout the history of the universe, re-emitting this energy at infrared wavelengths1-3. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are large organic molecules that trace millimetre-size dust grains and regulate the cooling of interstellar gas within galaxies4,5. Obser…
A dense ring of the trans-Neptunian object Quaoar outside its Roche limit
Olofsson, G.; Pagano, I.; Dhillon, V. S. +56 more
Planetary rings are observed not only around giant planets1, but also around small bodies such as the Centaur Chariklo2 and the dwarf planet Haumea3. Up to now, all known dense rings were located close enough to their parent bodies, being inside the Roche limit, where tidal forces prevent material with reasonable d…
A Milky Way-like barred spiral galaxy at a redshift of 3
Papovich, Casey; Finkelstein, Steven L.; Barro, Guillermo +30 more
The majority of massive disk galaxies in the local Universe show a stellar barred structure in their central regions, including our Milky Way1,2. Bars are supposed to develop in dynamically cold stellar disks at low redshift, as the strong gas turbulence typical of disk galaxies at high redshift suppresses or delays bar formation3,…
High atmospheric metal enrichment for a Saturn-mass planet
Stassun, Keivan G.; Mansfield, Megan; Bean, Jacob L. +9 more
Atmospheric metal enrichment (that is, elements heavier than helium, also called `metallicity') is a key diagnostic of the formation of giant planets1-3. The giant planets of the Solar System show an inverse relationship between mass and both their bulk metallicities and atmospheric metallicities. Extrasolar giant planets also display a…