Cloud Formation

Cloud formation in giant planets

We calculate the formation of dust clouds in atmospheres of giant gas-planets. The chemical structure and the evolution of the grain size distribution in the dust cloud layer is discussed based on a consistent treatment of seed formation, growth/evaporation and gravitational settling. Future developments are shortly addressed.

Cloud Formation, Evolution and Destruction

We now begin to trace the journey towards a star. How long does this take? The answer is surprisingly short: a good many clouds already contain new stars and these stars tend to be young. The typical cloud cannot spend long, if any time at all, in a dormant state. The first challenge is to accumulate gas into a molecular cloud. One dilemma is to decide what occurred first: the production of the...

Cloud formation in substellar atmospheres

Clouds seem like an every-day experience. But – do we know how clouds form on brown dwarfs and extra-solar planets? How do they look like? Can we see them? What are they composed of? Cloud formation is an old-fashioned but still outstanding problem for the Earth atmosphere, and it has turned into a challenge for the modelling of brown dwarf and exo-planetary atmospheres. Cloud formation imposes...

Modeling in-cloud SOA formation

Oort Cloud Formation and Dynamics

The Oort cloud is the primary source of the “nearly isotropic” comets, which include new and returning long-period comets and Halley-type comets. We focus on the following topics: (1) the orbital distribution of known comets and the cometary “fading” problem; (2) the population and mass of the Oort cloud, including the hypothetical inner Oort cloud; (3) the number of Oort cloud comets that surv...