Atmospheres, Climate, Weather Archives

Stellar irradiation comparison for the four inner planets of the Solar System (upper panel) and the LP 890-9 planetary system (lower panel), with scaled planetary radii. The Venus Zone (yellow shade) (Kane et al. 2014) and HZ (blue shade) transition gradually due to the complex climate feedback that may push planets into Earth-like or Venus-like states within the orbital range. HZ limit (solid blue) shown: inner empirical ‘Recent Venus’; and outer ‘Maximum Greenhouse’ limit. A ‘Runaway Greenhouse’ flux limit is also indicated following 1D (black dashed) (Kopparapu et al. 2014) and 3D (black dotted) climate modelling (Kopparapu et al. 2017).

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Extinction events, Habitable Zones, Press Release, Venus

Venus Atmosphere In 3D Prepares Future Observations Of Rocky Exoplanets

by Keith CowingJune 15, 2023June 15, 2023

The Venus atmosphere may be used as a natural laboratory to understand the evolution of Earth-like planets, according to a study led by the Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do […]

Simulations of the 2:1 mean-motion resonance crossing between the coorbitals Janus and Epimetheus and Enceladus using simpl. Enceladus and Dione were assumed to be on their current orbits, while Janus and Epimetheus were shifted inward. In the left-hand side panels Janus and Epimetheus were in their current horseshoe configuration, while they were put in a tadpole (Trojan) configuration in the right-hand panels. The coorbitals’ orbits are expanding due to an artificial acceleration meant to represent ring torques. We used k2/Q = 0.01 for Enceladus, and we ignored satellite tides for the coorbitals. -- astro-ph.EP

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Enceladus, Icy Worlds, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

A Past Episode of Rapid Tidal Evolution of Enceladus?

by Keith CowingJune 14, 2023October 7, 2025

Saturn possesses a dynamically rich system containing numerous moons and impressive rings. Whether the rings of Saturn are much younger than the planet itself has been a long-open question; more […]

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Habitable Zones, Status Report, Venus

Venus’ Atmospheric Chemistry and Cloud Characteristics Are Compatible with Venusian Life

by Keith CowingJune 14, 2023June 14, 2023

Venus is Earth’s sister planet, with similar mass and density but an uninhabitably hot surface, an atmosphere with a water activity 50-100 times lower than anywhere on Earths’ surface, and […]

The LSTM predicted mixing ratios plotted against the actual mixing ratios (left) and the LSTM mixing ratio prediction error in log space (right). The dashed diagonal line in the left plot shows the performance of a perfectly predicting model and the colour of each bin represents the number of predictions. The solid line in the right plot shows the median value, and the dashed lines show the 5th and 95th percentiles. -- astro-ph.EP

AI - Data - Apps - Cybernetics, Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Using A Neural Network Approach To Accelerate Disequilibrium Chemistry Calculations In Exoplanet Atmospheres

by Keith CowingJune 14, 2023June 14, 2023

In this era of exoplanet characterisation with JWST, the need for a fast implementation of classical forward models to understand the chemical and physical processes in exoplanet atmospheres is more […]

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Expanding The Inventory Of Spectral Lines Used To Trace Atmospheric Escape In Exoplanets

by Keith CowingJune 14, 2023June 14, 2023

Escaping exoplanet atmospheres have been observed as deep transit signatures in a few specific spectral lines. Detections have been made in the hydrogen Ly-α line, the metastable helium line at […]

SwRI Lead Scientist Dr. Christopher Glein was part of a team that found phosphorus, a key building block for life, from the subsurface ocean of Saturn’s small moon, Enceladus. Liquid water erupts from the moon’s subsurface ocean, forming a plume that contains grains of frozen ocean water. Some of these ice grains go on to form Saturn’s E ring. The team analyzed Cassini spacecraft data from ice grains in the E ring, which revealed fingerprints of soluble phosphate salts from Enceladus’ ocean. Credit: Courtesy of SwRI and Freie Universität Berlin

Astrochemistry, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Enceladus, Icy Worlds, Press Release, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Phosphorus – A Key Building Block For life – Found On Enceladus

by Keith CowingJune 14, 2023June 14, 2023

The search for extraterrestrial life in our solar system just got more exciting. A team of scientists including Southwest Research Institute’s Dr. Christopher Glein has discovered new evidence that the […]

The left panel shows the synthetic transmission spectra of the evening and morning limbs of WASP-39b with a resolution of R = 300. The atmospheric structure and chemical composition are based on 2D VULCAN, incorporating temperature and wind profiles obtained from the Exo-FMS GCM. The models excluding horizontal transport are labelled 1D for comparison. The right panel shows the morning-evening averaged transmission spectra when assuming different atmospheric metallicities within 2D VULCAN. -- astro-ph.EP

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Status Report

Day-night Transport Induced Chemistry And Clouds On WASP-39b I: Gas-phase Composition

by Keith CowingJune 14, 2023June 14, 2023

JWST has recently detected the first robust photochemical product on an exoplanet: sulfur dioxide (SO2) on WASP-39b (Rustamkulov et al. 2023; Alderson et al. 2023; Tsai et al. 2023b).

Detection maps of the β Pictoris SINFONI data. Each column shows the detection map at a different spectral resolution, while the rows are for different cross-correlation templates. -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Brown Dwarfs, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report

Trade-offs In High-contrast Integral Field Spectroscopy For Exoplanet Detection And Characterisation: Young Gas Giants In Emission

by Keith CowingJune 14, 2023June 14, 2023

Context: Combining high-contrast imaging with medium- or high-resolution integral field spectroscopy has the potential to boost the detection rate of exoplanets, especially at small angular separations.

The frame rotates with the planetary mean motion, so the position of observers rotates clockwise, with regions of start, pre, transit, post, and end shown in observations divided by black dotted lines. The logarithm of gas density is shown in the color scale. A low-density but relatively fast stellar wind expands from HAT-P-32 A at the coordinate origin and interacts with the outflow from HAT-P-32 b. The outflow from HAT-P-32 b is stretched into long, column-like tails leading and trailing the planet along the orbital path. These tidal tails are shaped by the advection of slow-moving planetary outflow in the star-planet gravitational field. Credit: M. MacLeod (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and A. Oklopčić (Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam). - McDonald Observatory - ScienceAdvances

Astrochemistry, Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Press Release

Astronomers Observe Giant Tails of Helium Escaping Jupiter-Like Planet

by Keith CowingJune 9, 2023June 9, 2023

A team of astronomers has used observations from the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) at The University of Texas at Austin’s McDonald Observatory to discover some of the longest tails of gas […]

All Trappist-1e model outputs consistent with an airless Trappist-1b and c, and with initial volatile endowments constrained by the airlessness of the inner planets. Since Trappist-1e orbits beyond the runaway greenhouse limit during the main sequence evolution of Trappist-1, the potential for substantial atmospheric erosion is limited, as most model runs in Monte Carlo simulations retain substantial surface volatile inventories. -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Habitable Zones, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Press Release, TRAPPIST-1

Implications Of Atmospheric Non-detections For Trappist-1 Inner Planets on Atmospheric Retention Prospects For Outer Planets

by Keith CowingJune 9, 2023June 9, 2023

JWST secondary eclipse observations of Trappist-1b seemingly disfavor atmospheres >~1 bar since heat redistribution is expected to yield dayside emission temperature below the ~500 K observed.

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather

Venus Atmosphere In 3D Prepares Future Observations Of Rocky Exoplanets

A Past Episode of Rapid Tidal Evolution of Enceladus?

Venus’ Atmospheric Chemistry and Cloud Characteristics Are Compatible with Venusian Life

Using A Neural Network Approach To Accelerate Disequilibrium Chemistry Calculations In Exoplanet Atmospheres

Expanding The Inventory Of Spectral Lines Used To Trace Atmospheric Escape In Exoplanets

Phosphorus – A Key Building Block For life – Found On Enceladus

Day-night Transport Induced Chemistry And Clouds On WASP-39b I: Gas-phase Composition

Trade-offs In High-contrast Integral Field Spectroscopy For Exoplanet Detection And Characterisation: Young Gas Giants In Emission

Astronomers Observe Giant Tails of Helium Escaping Jupiter-Like Planet

Implications Of Atmospheric Non-detections For Trappist-1 Inner Planets on Atmospheric Retention Prospects For Outer Planets

Astrobiology Graduate Conference (AbGradCon26) Update

ExMODE: A Comprehensive Resource For Extremophile Genomic And Functional Exploration

Mass Wasting On Mars

The Hill Sphere Transits of Beta Pictoris c and The Search for Another 1981-like Event

Sample Return Tech: Pre-impact Meteorite Strewn Field Predictions For Imminent Impactors And Meteorite Recovery