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Infrared spectrometer instrument (MIRS) onboard MMX prepared the cartoon! France, English, and Japanese are available here! You can also visit the new web-site!    

MMX SWT meeting at Paris! Go, go MMX for 2026 launch!

In conjunction with the “Connect Rigaku” Rigaku Hagiyukai alumni event, our laboratory also held an online reunion meeting on Saturday, November 9, from 3:00 p.m. The event was attended by 15 participants!

There is very limited information known about the exoplanetary systems in the beyond. These are the seven planets around the TRAPPIST-1 star that I’m interested in. This primary star is fainter than the Sun, and the planets around it are about ten times closer than Mercury in our solar system, which causes a phenomenon called tidal fixation, where one side of the planet is always facing the primary star. This would create an environment different from that of the planets in our solar system. Furthermore, depending on whether the main atmosphere of these planets is mainly carbon dioxide like Venus...

http://www.gp.tohoku.ac.jp/open-campus/open-campus-2020.html https://www.sci.tohoku.ac.jp/oc/

Recent studies found that the water vapor has been transported up to 100 km during planet-encircling dust event (PEDE) in both north and south hemispheres using the Atmospheric Chemistry Suite (ACS) and Nadir and Occultation for Mars Discovery spectrometer (NOMAD) onboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) [Vandaele et al.,2019; Fedorova et al., 2020; Aoki et al., 2020]. The unexpected water at high-altitudes could intensify the loss of water from Mars to space, as the result of photo- dissociation to hydrogen at upper atmosphere [Chaffin et al., 2017; Heavens et al., 2020]. Although mesospheric circulation on Mars is thus largely...

How have the atmospheres of Mars and exoplanets (planets outside the solar system) changed in the past from the birth of the planets to the present? We have investigated about this point of view. On Earth today, there is an atmosphere with 1 atm (1bar, 100 kPa), which is composed of N2: 78%, O2: 21%, Argon, Carbon dioxide, and so on. The current atmosphere on Mars, however, is mostly carbon dioxide and has about 1/100 less than that of the current atmosphere on Earth. The atmosphere varies from planet to planet. So what was Mars’ atmosphere like in the past?...

In 1995, the first exoplanet was discovered outside our solar system. To date, more than 4,000 planets have been discovered outside our solar system. These numerous exoplanets are diverse and include planets the size of Jupiter orbiting very close to their stars and planets with elliptical orbits that are far from circular. 4,000 planets are statistically more or less likely to have a large variety of its size and mass. One can find a very small population of planets at a certain size range, so called “the Fulton gap”. A small number of planets at a certain size range means...