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An atmosphere () is a layer of gas or layers of gases that envelop a planet, and is held in place by the gravity of the planetary body. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low. A stellar atmosphere is the outer region of a star, which includes the layers above the opaque photosphere; stars of low temperature might have outer atmospheres containing compound molecules. The atmosphere of Earth is composed of nitrogen (78 %), oxygen (21 %), argon (0.
Atmospheric escape is the loss of planetary atmospheric gases to outer space. A number of different mechanisms can be responsible for atmospheric escape; these processes can be divided into thermal escape, non-thermal (or suprathermal) escape, and impact erosion. The relative importance of each loss process depends on the planet's escape velocity, its atmosphere composition, and its distance from its star. Escape occurs when molecular kinetic energy overcomes gravitational energy; in other words, a molecule can escape when it is moving faster than the escape velocity of its planet.
Tholins (after the Greek θολός (tholós) "hazy" or "muddy"; from the ancient Greek word meaning "sepia ink") are a wide variety of organic compounds formed by solar ultraviolet or cosmic ray irradiation of simple carbon-containing compounds such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) or ethane (C2H6), often in combination with nitrogen (N2) or water (H2O). Tholins are disordered polymer-like materials made of repeating chains of linked subunits and complex combinations of functional groups, typically nitriles and hydrocarbons, and their degraded forms such as amines and phenyls.
Isoprene is a key trace component of the atmosphere emitted by vegetation and other organisms. It is highly reactive and can impact atmospheric composition and climate by affecting the greenhouse gases ozone and methane and secondary organic aerosol format ...
Yacora on the Web (www.yacora.de ) is a web application providing access to collisional radiative models based on the flexible solver Yacora. The main application range is plasma diagnostics in low-pressure plasmas. Available online are three collisional r ...
Emission spectroscopy measurements on a plasma representative of Titan atmosphere composition were obtained in the Inductively Coupled Plasma wind tunnel facility (VKI-Minitorch) at the von Karman Institute in Belgium. Temperatures ranged from 3600 to 5000 ...
