No Arabic abstract
We study the phase curves for the planets of our Solar System; which, is considered as a non-compact planetary system. We focus on modeling the small variations of the light curve, based on the three photometric effects: reflection, ellipsoidal, and Doppler beaming. Theoretical predictions for these photometric variations are proposed, as if a hypothetical external observer would measure them. In contrast to similar studies of multi-planetary systems, the physical and geometrical parameters for each planet of the Solar System are well-known. Therefore, we can evaluate with accuracy the mathematical relations that shape the planetary light curves for an external fictitious observer. Our results suggest that in all the planets of study the ellipsoidal effect is very weak, while the Doppler beaming effect is in general dominant. In fact, the latter effect seems to be confirmed as the principal cause of variations of the light curves for the planets. This affirmation could not be definitive in Mercury or Venus where the Doppler beaming and the reflection effects have similar amplitudes. The obtained phase curves for the Solar System planets show interesting new features that have not been presented before, so the results presented here are relevant in their application to other non-compact systems, since they allow us to have an idea of what it is expected to find in their light curves.
Minor bodies of the solar system can be used to measure the spectrum of the Sun as a star by observing sunlight reflected by their surfaces. To perform an accurate measurement of the radial velocity of the Sun as a star by this method, it is necessary to take into account the Doppler shifts introduced by the motion of the reflecting body. Here we discuss the effect of its rotation. It gives a vanishing contribution only when the inclinations of the body rotation axis to the directions of the Sun and of the Earth observer are the same. When this is not the case, the perturbation of the radial velocity does not vanish and can reach up to about 2.4 m/s for an asteroid such as 2 Pallas that has an inclination of the spin axis to the plane of the ecliptic of about 30 degrees. We introduce a geometric model to compute the perturbation in the case of a uniformly reflecting body of spherical or triaxial ellipsoidal shape and provide general results to easily estimate the magnitude of the effect.
EarthFinder is a Probe Mission concept selected for study by NASA for input to the 2020 astronomy decadal survey. This study is currently active and a final white paper report is due to NASA at the end of calendar 2018. We are tasked with evaluating the scientific rationale for obtaining precise radial velocity (PRV) measurements in space, which is a two-part inquiry: What can be gained from going to space? What cant be done form the ground? These two questions flow down to these specific tasks for our study - Identify the velocity limit, if any, introduced from micro- and macro-telluric absorption in the Earths atmosphere; Evaluate the unique advantages that a space-based platform provides to emable the identification and mitigation of stellar acitivity for multi-planet signal recovery.
Data from the Kepler satellite (Q0-Q11) are used to study HAT-P-7. The satellites data are extremely valuable for asteroseismic studies of stars and for observing planetary transits; in this work we do both. An asteroseismic study of the host star improves the accuracy of the stellar parameters derived by Christensen-Dalsgaard et al. (2010), who followed largely the same procedure but based the analysis on only one month of Kepler data. The stellar information is combined with transit observations, phase variations and occultations to derive planetary parameters. In particular, we confirm the presence of ellipsoidal variations as discovered by Welsh et al. (2010), but revise their magnitude, and we revise the occultation depth (Borucki et al. 2009), which leads to different planetary temperature estimates. All other stellar and planetary parameters are now more accurately determined.
The recent ALMA DSHARP survey provided illuminating results on the diversity of substructures in planet forming disks. These substructures trace pebble-sized grains accumulated at local pressure maxima, possibly due to planet-disk interactions or other planet formation processes. DSHARP sources are heavily biased to large and massive disks that only represent the high (dust flux) tail end of the disk population. Thus it is unclear whether similar substructures and corresponding physical processes also occur in the majority of disks which are fainter and more compact. Here we explore the presence and characteristics of features in a compact disk around GQ Lup A, the effective radius of which is 1.5 to 10 times smaller than those of DSHARP disks. We present our analysis of ALMA 1.3mm continuum observations of the GQ Lup system. By fitting visibility profiles of the continuum emission, we find substructures including a gap at ~ 10 au. The compact disk around GQ Lup exhibits similar substructures to those in the DSHARP sample, suggesting that mechanisms of trapping pebble-sized grains are at work in small disks as well. Characteristics of the feature at ~ 10 au, if due to a hidden planet, are evidence of planet formation at Saturnian distances. Our results hint at a rich world of substructures to be identified within the common population of compact disks, and subsequently a population of solar system analogs within these disks. Such study is critical to understanding the formation mechanisms and planet populations in the majority of protoplanetary disks.
In this study, we employed broadband X-rays ($6-2000$ eV) to irradiate the frozen acetone CH$_3$COCH$_3$, at the temperature of 12 K, with different photon fluences up to $2.7times 10^{18}$ photons cm$^{-2}$. Here, we consider acetone as a representative complex organic molecule (COM) present on interstellar ice grains. The experiments were conduced at the Brazilian synchrotron facility (LNLS/CNPEN) employing infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) to monitor chemical changes induced by radiation in the ice sample. We determined the effective destruction cross-section of the acetone molecule and the effective formation cross-section for daughter species. Chemical equilibrium, obtained for fluence $2times 10^{18}$ photons cm$^{-2}$, and molecular abundances at this stage were determined, which also includes the estimates for the abundance of unknown molecules, produced but not detected, in the ice. Timescales for ices, at hypothetical snow line distances, to reach chemical equilibrium around several compact and main-sequence X-ray sources are given. We estimate timescales of 18 days, 3.6 and 1.8 months, $1.4times 10^9-6times 10^{11}$ years, 600 and $1.2times 10^7$ years, and $10^7$ years, for the Sun at 5 AU, for O/B stars at 5 AU, for white dwarfs at 1 LY, for the Crab pulsar at 2.25 LY, for Vela pulsar at 2.25 LY, and for Sagittarius A* at 3 LY, respectively. This study improves our current understanding about radiation effects on the chemistry of frozen material, in particular, focusing for the first time, the effects of X-rays produced by compact objects in their eventual surrounding ices.