arXiv subjects

Laura Peticolas

Publications and source records attributed to Laura Peticolas.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Atmospheric Escape Rates from Mars - If it Orbited an Old M-Dwarf Star

Atmospheric escape is an important process that influences the evolution of planetary atmospheres. A variety of physical mechanisms can contribute to escape from an atmosphere, including thermal escape, ion escape, photochemical escape, and sputtering. Here we estimate escape rates via each of these processes for a hypothetical Mars-like exoplanet orbiting Barnard's star (an old, inactive M dwarf star). We place the planet at an orbital distance that receives the same total stellar flux as it does in our solar system. We use the measured stellar extreme ultraviolet (EUV) spectrum and assumptions on the star's magnetic field to determine both the high-energy radiation and the stellar wind environment around the planet. This information is used to model the response of the planet's thermosphere, exosphere and magnetosphere using a variety of models that have been validated against solar system observations. We find overall escape rates that are dominated by thermal processes and elevated by 2-5 orders of magnitude relative to present-day Mars, suggesting that a Mars-like planet orbiting Barnard's star would not retain a significant atmosphere for more than 10's of millions of years. Recently reported planets around Barnard's star should also not have retained significant atmospheres. By extension, Mars-like planets orbiting any M dwarf near the 'Habitable Zone' should not retain atmospheres for extended periods of time.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2022

3UCubed: The IMAP Student Collaboration CubeSat Project

The 3UCubed project is a 3U CubeSat being jointly developed by the University of New Hampshire, Sonoma State University, and Howard University as a part of the NASA Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, IMAP, student collaboration. This project comprises of a multidisciplinary team of undergraduate students from all three universities. The mission goal of the 3UCubed is to understand how Earths polar upper atmosphere the thermosphere in Earths auroral regions, responds to particle precipitation and solar wind forcing, and internal magnetospheric processes. 3UCubed includes two instruments with rocket heritage to achieve the science mission: an ultraviolet photomultiplier tube, UVPMT, and an electron retarding potential analyzer ERPA. The spacecraft bus consists of the following subsystems: Attitude Determination and Control, Command and Data Handling, Power, Communication, Structural, and Thermal. Currently, the project is in the post-PDR stage, starting to build and test engineering models to develop a FlatSat prior to critical design review in 2023. The goal is to launch at least one 3U CubeSat to collect science data close to the anticipated peak of Solar Cycle 25 around July 2025. Our mother mission, IMAP, is also projected to launch in 2025, which will let us jointly analyze the science data of the main mission, providing the solar wind measurements and inputs to the magnetosphere with that of 3UCubed, providing the response of Earths cusp to these inputs.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2022

The Eclipse Megamovie Project (2017)

The total solar eclipse of August 21, 2017, crossed the whole width of North America, the first occasion for this during the modern age of consumer electronics. Accordingly, it became a great opportunity to engage the public and to enlist volunteer observers with relatively high-level equipment; our program ("Eclipse Megamovie") took advantage of this as a means of creating a first-ever public database of such eclipse photography. This resulted in a large outreach program, involving many hundreds of individuals, supported almost entirely on a volunteer basis and with the institutional help of Google, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and the University of California, Berkeley. The project home page is \url{http://eclipsemegamovie.org}, which contains the movie itself. We hope that our comments here will help with planning for similar activities in the total eclipse of April 8, 2024.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2020

Towards Inclusive Practices with Indigenous Knowledge

Astronomy across world cultures is rooted in Indigenous Knowledge. We share models of partnering with indigenous communities involving Collaboration with Integrity to co-create an inclusive scientific enterprise on Earth and in space.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2020

Utilizing Small Telescopes Operated by Citizen Scientists for Transiting Exoplanet Follow-up

Due to the efforts by numerous ground-based surveys and NASA's Kepler and TESS, there will be hundreds, if not thousands, of transiting exoplanets ideal for atmospheric characterization via spectroscopy with large platforms such as JWST and ARIEL. However their next predicted mid-transit time could become so increasingly uncertain over time that significant overhead would be required to ensure the detection of the entire transit. As a result, follow-up observations to characterize these exoplanetary atmospheres would require less-efficient use of an observatory's time---which is an issue for large platforms where minimizing observing overheads is a necessity. Here we demonstrate the power of citizen scientists operating smaller observatories ($\le$1-m) to keep ephemerides "fresh", defined here as when the 1$\sigma$ uncertainty in the mid-transit time is less than half the transit duration. We advocate for the creation of a community-wide effort to perform ephemeris maintenance on transiting exoplanets by citizen scientists. Such observations can be conducted with even a 6-inch telescope, which has the potential to save up to $\sim$10,000~days for a 1000-planet survey. Based on a preliminary analysis of 14 transits from a single 6-inch MicroObservatory telescope, we empirically estimate the ability of small telescopes to benefit the community. Observations with a small-telescope network operated by citizen scientists are capable of resolving stellar blends to within 5''/pixel, can follow-up long period transits in short-baseline TESS fields, monitor epoch-to-epoch stellar variability at a precision 0.67\%$\pm$0.12\% for a 11.3 V-mag star, and search for new planets or constrain the masses of known planets with transit timing variations greater than two minutes.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2019

Astro2020 APC White Paper: Collaboration with Integrity: Indigenous Knowledge in 21st Century Astronomy

As the oldest science common to all human cultures, astronomy has a unique connection to indigenous knowledge (IK) and the long history of indigenous scientific contributions. Many STEM disciplines, agencies and institutions have begun to do the work of recruiting and retaining underrepresented minorities, including indigenous, Native American and Native Hawaiian professionals. However, with the expansion of telescope facilities on sacred tribal or indigenous lands in recent decades, and the current urgency of global crises related to climate, food/water sovereignty and the future of humanity, science and astronomy have the opportunity more than ever to partner with indigenous communities and respect the wealth of sustainable practices and solutions inherently present in IK. We share a number of highly successful current initiatives that point the way to a successful model of "collaboration with integrity" between western and indigenous scholars. Such models deserve serious consideration for sustained funding at local and institutional levels. We also share six key recommendations for funding agencies that we believe will be important first steps for nonindigenous institutions to fully dialog and partner with indigenous communities and IK to build together towards a more inclusive, sustainable and empowering scientific enterprise.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2019

Engaging Citizen Scientists to Keep Transit Times Fresh and Ensure the Efficient Use of Transiting Exoplanet Characterization Missions

This white paper advocates for the creation of a community-wide program to maintain precise mid-transit times of exoplanets that would likely be targeted by future platforms. Given the sheer number of targets that will require careful monitoring between now and the launch of the next generation of exoplanet characterization missions, this network will initially be devised as a citizen science project -- focused on the numerous amateur astronomers, small universities and community colleges and high schools that have access to modest sized telescopes and off-the-shelf CCDs.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2012

The U.S. Eclipse Megamovie in 2017: a white paper on a unique outreach event

Totality during the solar eclipse of 2017 traverses the entire breadth of the continental United States, from Oregon to South Carolina. It thus provides the opportunity to assemble a very large number of images, obtained by amateur observers all along the path, into a continuous record of coronal evolution in time; totality lasts for an hour and a half over the continental U.S. While we describe this event here as an opportunity for public education and outreach, such a movie -with very high time resolution and extending to the chromosphere - will also contain unprecedented information about the physics of the solar corona.

astro-ph.SR↗