Infrared light curves of transiting hot Jupiters present a trend in which the atmospheres of the hottest planets are less efficient at redistributing the stellar energy absorbed on their daysides-and thus have a larger day-night temperature contrast-than colder planets. To this day, no predictive atmospheric model has been published that identifies which dynamical mechanisms determine the atmospheric heat redistribution efficiency on tidally locked exoplanets. Here we present a shallow water model of the atmospheric dynamics on synchronously rotating planets that explains why heat redistribution efficiency drops as stellar insolation rises. Our model shows that planets with weak friction and weak irradiation exhibit a banded zonal flow with minimal day-night temperature differences, while models with strong irradiation and/or strong friction exhibit a day-night flow pattern with order-unity fractional day-night temperature differences. To interpret the model, we develop a scaling theory which shows that the timescale for gravity waves to propagate horizontally over planetary scales, τ wave , plays a dominant role in controlling the transition from small to large temperature contrasts. This implies that heat redistribution is governed by a wave-like process, similar to the one responsible for the weak temperature gradients in the Earth's tropics. When atmospheric drag can be neglected, the transition from small to large day-night temperature contrasts occurs when τ wave ∼ √ τ rad /Ω, where τ rad is the radiative relaxation time and Ω is the planetary rotation frequency. Alternatively, this transition criterion can be expressed as τ rad ∼ τ vert , where τ vert is the timescale for a fluid parcel to move vertically over the difference in day-night thickness. These results subsume the more widely used timescale comparison for estimating heat redistribution efficiency between τ rad and the horizontal day-night advection timescale, τ adv . Only because τ adv ∼ τ vert for hot Jupiters does the commonly assumed timescale comparison between τ rad and τ adv yield approximately correct predictions for the heat redistribution efficiency.

Short-period exoplanets can have dayside surface temperatures surpassing 2000 K, hot enough to vaporize rock and drive a thermal wind. Small enough planets evaporate completely. We construct a radiative-hydrodynamic model of atmospheric escape from strongly irradiated, low-mass rocky planets, accounting for dust-gas energy exchange in the wind. Rocky planets with masses 0.1M ⊕ (less than twice the mass of Mercury) and surface temperatures 2000 K are found to disintegrate entirely in 10 Gyr. When our model is applied to Kepler planet candidate KIC 12557548b -which is believed to be a rocky body evaporating at a rate oḟ M 0.1 M ⊕ /Gyr -our model yields a present-day planet mass of 0.02 M ⊕ or less than about twice the mass of the Moon. Mass loss rates depend so strongly on planet mass that bodies can reside on close-in orbits for Gyrs with initial masses comparable to or less than that of Mercury, before entering a final short-lived phase of catastrophic mass loss (which KIC 12557548b has entered). Because this catastrophic stage lasts only up to a few percent of the planet's life, we estimate that for every object like KIC 12557548b, there should be 10-100 close-in quiescent progenitors with sub-day periods whose hard-surface transits may be detectable by Kepler -if the progenitors are as large as their maximal, Mercury-like sizes (alternatively, the progenitors could be smaller and more numerous). According to our calculations, KIC 12557548b may have lost ∼70% of its formation mass; today we may be observing its naked iron core.

Whether protoplanetary disks accrete at observationally significant rates by the magnetorotational instability (MRI) depends on how well ionized they are. Disk surface layers ionized by stellar X-rays are susceptible to charge neutralization by small condensates, ranging from ∼0.01-µm-sized grains to angstrom-sized polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Ion densities in X-ray-irradiated surfaces are so low that ambipolar diffusion weakens the MRI. Here we show that ionization by stellar far-ultraviolet (FUV) radiation enables full-blown MRI turbulence in disk surface layers. Far-UV ionization of atomic carbon and sulfur produces a plasma so dense that it is immune to ion recombination on grains and PAHs. The FUV-ionized layer, of thickness 0.01-0.1 g/cm 2 , behaves in the ideal magnetohydrodynamic limit and can accrete at observationally significant rates at radii 1-10 AU. Surface layer accretion driven by FUV ionization can reproduce the trend of increasing accretion rate with increasing hole size seen in transitional disks. At radii 1-10 AU, FUV-ionized surface layers cannot sustain the accretion rates generated at larger distance, and unless turbulent mixing of plasma can thicken the MRI-active layer, an additional means of transport is needed. In the case of transitional disks, it could be provided by planets.

Transitional" T Tauri disks have optically thin holes with radii 10 AU, yet accrete up to the median T Tauri rate. Multiple planets inside the hole can torque the gas to high radial speeds over large distances, reducing the local surface density while maintaining accretion. Thus multi-planet systems, together with reductions in disk opacity due to grain growth, can explain how holes can be simultaneously transparent and accreting. There remains the problem of how outer disk gas diffuses into the hole. Here it has been proposed that the magnetorotational instability (MRI) erodes disk surface layers ionized by stellar X-rays. In contrast to previous work, we find that the extent to which surface layers are MRI-active is limited not by ohmic dissipation but by ambipolar diffusion, the latter measured by Am: the number of times a neutral hydrogen molecule collides with ions in a dynamical time. Simulations by Hawley & Stone showed that Am ∼ 100 is necessary for ions to drive MRI turbulence in neutral gas. We calculate that in X-ray-irradiated surface layers, Am typically varies from ∼10 −3 to 1, depending on the abundance of charge-adsorbing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, whose properties we infer from Spitzer observations. We conclude that ionization of H 2 by X-rays and cosmic rays can sustain, at most, only weak MRI turbulence in surface layers 1-10 g/cm 2 thick, and that accretion rates in such layers are too small compared to observed accretion rates for the majority of disks.

The Nuclear Compton Telescope (NCT) is a balloon-borne Compton telescope designed for the study of astrophysical sources in the soft gamma-ray regime (200 keV-20 MeV). NCT's ten high-purity germanium crossed-strip detectors measure the deposited energies and three-dimensional positions of gamma-ray interactions in the sensitive volume, and this information is used to restrict the initial photon to a circle on the sky using the Compton scatter technique. Thus NCT is able to perform spectroscopy, imaging, and polarization analysis on soft gamma-ray sources. NCT is one of the next generation of Compton telescopes -so-called compact Compton telescopes (CCTs) -which can achieve effective areas comparable to COMPTEL's with an instrument that is a fraction of the size. The Crab Nebula was the primary target for the second flight of the NCT instrument, which occurred on 17-18 May 2009 in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Analysis of 29.3 ks of data from the flight reveals an image of the Crab at a significance of 4σ. This is the first reported detection of an astrophysical source by a CCT.