Topography of (exo)planets. (arXiv:1902.00047v1 [astro-ph.EP])
<a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Landais_F/0/1/0/all/0/1">François Landais</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Schmidt_F/0/1/0/all/0/1">Frederic Schmidt</a>, <a href="http://arxiv.org/find/astro-ph/1/au:+Lovejoy_S/0/1/0/all/0/1">Shaun Lovejoy</a>
Current technology is not able to map the topography of rocky exoplanets,
simply because the objects are too faint and far away to resolve them.
Nevertheless, indirect effect of topography should be soon observable thanks to
photometry techniques, and the possibility of detecting specular reflections.
In addition, topography may have a strong effect on Earth-like exoplanet
climates because oceans and mountains affect the distribution of clouds
citep{Houze2012}. Also topography is critical for evaluating surface
habitability citep{Dohm2015}.
We propose here a general statistical theory to describe and generate
realistic synthetic topographies of rocky exoplanetary bodies. In the solar
system, we have examined the best-known bodies: the Earth, Moon, Mars and
Mercury. It turns out that despite their differences, they all can be described
by multifractral statistics, although with different parameters. Assuming that
this property is universal, we propose here a model to simulate 2D spherical
random field that mimics a rocky planetary body in a stellar system. We also
propose to apply this model to estimate the statistics of oceans and continents
to help to better assess the habitability of distant worlds.
Current technology is not able to map the topography of rocky exoplanets,
simply because the objects are too faint and far away to resolve them.
Nevertheless, indirect effect of topography should be soon observable thanks to
photometry techniques, and the possibility of detecting specular reflections.
In addition, topography may have a strong effect on Earth-like exoplanet
climates because oceans and mountains affect the distribution of clouds
citep{Houze2012}. Also topography is critical for evaluating surface
habitability citep{Dohm2015}.
We propose here a general statistical theory to describe and generate
realistic synthetic topographies of rocky exoplanetary bodies. In the solar
system, we have examined the best-known bodies: the Earth, Moon, Mars and
Mercury. It turns out that despite their differences, they all can be described
by multifractral statistics, although with different parameters. Assuming that
this property is universal, we propose here a model to simulate 2D spherical
random field that mimics a rocky planetary body in a stellar system. We also
propose to apply this model to estimate the statistics of oceans and continents
to help to better assess the habitability of distant worlds.
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