Search Publications
Atmospheric Electricity at Saturn
Dyudina, Ulyana A.; Gurnett, Donald A.; Fischer, Georg +5 more
The Cassini mission provides a great opportunity to enlarge our knowledge of atmospheric electricity at the gas giant Saturn. Following Voyager studies, the RPWS (Radio and Plasma Wave Science) instrument has measured again the so-called SEDs (Saturn Electrostatic Discharges) which are the radio signature of lightning flashes. Observations by Cass…
Updated Review of Planetary Atmospheric Electricity
Fischer, G.; Zarka, P.; Renno, N. +2 more
This paper reviews the progress achieved in planetary atmospheric electricity, with focus on lightning observations by present operational spacecraft, aiming to fill the hiatus from the latest review published by Desch et al. (Rep. Prog. Phys. 65:955 997, 2002). The information is organized according to solid surface bodies (Earth, Venus, Mars and…
Astrobiology and habitability of Titan
Raulin, Francois
Largest satellite of Saturn and the only in the solar system having a dense atmosphere, Titan is one of the key planetary bodies for astrobiological studies, due to several aspects. (i) Its analogies with planet Earth, in spite of much lower temperatures, with, in particular, a methane cycle on Titan analogous to the water cycle on Earth. (ii) The…
Capabilities of Philae, the Rosetta Lander
Biele, J.; Ulamec, S.
In situ (and sample return) space missions are the most promising tools to investigate the origin and evolution of comet nuclei. We present the instruments and investigations that will be performed with PHILAE (the ROSETTA Lander) on comet 67P Churyumov Gerasimenko, starting in November 2014, ten years after launch. The rationale and the performan…
Soft X-Ray and Extreme Ultraviolet Excess Emission from Clusters of Galaxies
Kaastra, J. S.; Durret, F.; Werner, N. +2 more
An excess over the extrapolation to the extreme ultraviolet and soft X-ray ranges of the thermal emission from the hot intracluster medium has been detected in a number of clusters of galaxies. We briefly present each of the satellites (EUVE, ROSAT PSPC and BeppoSAX, and presently XMM-Newton, Chandra and Suzaku) and their corresponding instrumenta…
Photoemission Phenomena in the Solar System
Strobel, D. F.; Crovisier, J.; Cravens, T. E. +2 more
Much of what we know about the atmospheres of the planets and other bodies in the solar system comes from detection of photons over a wide wavelength range, from X-rays to radio waves. In this chapter, we present current information in various categories—measurements of the airglows of the terrestrial planets, the dayglows of the outer planets and…
Loss of the Surface Layers of Comet Nuclei
Keller, H. U.; Thomas, N.; Alexander, C.
The Deep Impact observations of low thermal inertia for comet 9P/Tempel 1 are of profound importance for the observations to be made by the Rosetta spacecraft at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. While sub-surface sublimation is necessary to explain the observations, the depth at which this occurs is no more than 2 3 cm and possibly less. The low t…
Composition Measurements of a Comet from the Rosetta Orbiter Spacecraft
Alexander, C.; Gulkis, S.
The European Space Agency (ESA) Rosetta Spacecraft, launched on March 2, 2004 toward Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (C-G), carries a complementary set of instruments on both the orbiter and lander (Philae) portions of the spacecraft, to measure the composition of the Comet C-G. The primary composition measuring instruments on the Orbiter are Alic…
Rapporteur Paper on the Composition of Comets
Altwegg, Kathrin
The ISSI workshop on “Origin and evolution of comet nuclei” had the goal to put together recent scientific findings concerning the “life” of a comet from the formation of the material in a dark molecular cloud to the accretion in the early solar system, from cometesimals to comet nuclei which were shaped and altered by cosmic rays, by radioisotopi…