Investigating the icy crust and craters of Enceladus

There has been a lot of research on Saturn’s moon Enceladus because of the plumes of water vapour emanating from this icy moon’s south pole. However, not much is known about the characteristics of the rest of the moon. This Thesis uses infrared spectral data gathered by Cassini’s VIMS instrument to search for traces of materials other than water...

Gas Giants from a Protoplanetary Disk: Thesis report

The Earth is not the only planet in the universe. It has been known for millennia that there are other planets and other bodies in the solar system. Moreover, as recent as, 1995 it has been confirmed that other stars also host planets. But how did they form? This is the main question that planet formation research has been trying to answer for...

Icy moon plume simulator chamber: The design of a laboratory recreation of an icy moon plume

Since the discovery of plumes on Saturn's icy moon Enceladus' southern pole by Cassini in 2005, these phenomena have been observed and simulated by computer models. This study takes a next step in icy-moon plume research and proposes a design for a laboratory set-up that recreates such a plume here on Earth. This set-up consists of a cylindrical...

On the origin of the moons of Jupiter

The origin of the Galilean moons have puzzled the scientists for centuries. The most recent theories affirm that they formed within a circumplanetary disk (CPD), a disk of gas and dust very similar to the protoplanetary disk (PPD), from which the planets formed. However, there are still many uncertainties on this CPD, such as its size, mass, the...