Context. The tenuous nitrogen (N2) atmosphere on Pluto undergoes strong seasonal effects due to high obliquity and orbital eccentricity, and has recently (July 2015) been observed by the New Horizons spacecraft. Aims. The main goals of this study are (i) to construct a well calibrated record of the seasonal evolution of surface pressure on Pluto and (ii) to constrain the structure of the lower atmosphere using a central flash observed in 2015. Methods. Eleven stellar occultations by Pluto observed between 2002 and 2016 are used to retrieve atmospheric profiles (density, pressure, temperature) between altitude levels of ~5 and ~380 km (i.e. pressures from ~ 10 μbar to 10 nbar). Results. (i) Pressure has suffered a monotonic increase from 1988 to 2016, that is compared to a seasonal volatile transport model, from which tight constraints on a combination of albedo and emissivity of N2 ice are derived. (ii) A central flash observed on 2015 June 29 is consistent with New Horizons REX profiles, provided that (a) large diurnal temperature variations (not expected by current models) occur over Sputnik Planitia; and/or (b) hazes with tangential optical depth of ~0.3 are present at 4–7 km altitude levels; and/or (c) the nominal REX density values are overestimated by an implausibly large factor of ~20%; and/or (d) higher terrains block part of the flash in the Charon facing hemisphere.

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Solar diameter measurements have been made nearly continuously through different techniques for more than three centuries. They were obtained mainly with ground-based instruments except for some recent estimates deduced from space observations. One of the main problems in such space data analysis is that, up to now, it has been difficult to obtain an absolute value owing to the absence of an internally calibrated system. Eclipse observations provide a unique opportunity to give an absolute angular scale to the measurements, leading to an absolute value of the solar diameter. However, the problem is complicated by the Moon limb, which presents asphericity because of the mountains. We present a determination of the solar diameter derived from the total solar eclipse observation in Turkey and Egypt on 29 March 2006. We found that the solar radius carried back to 1 AU was 959.22± 0.04 arcsec at the time of the observations. The inspection of the compiled 19 modern eclipses data, with solar activity, shows that the radius changes are nonhomologous, an ef-A. Kilcik ( ) 238 A. Kilcik et al. fect that may explain the discrepancies found in ground-based measurements and implies the role of the shallow subsurface layers (leptocline) of the Sun.

In 1997 the Sun and the Earth passed through the equatorial plane of Jupiter and therefore through the orbital planes of its main satellites. During this period, mutual eclipses and occultations occurred and were observed. We investigate the precision of the catalogue to produce improved data for the development of dynamical models. Light curves of mutual eclipses and occultations were recorded by the observers of the international campaign PHEMU97 organized by the Institut de Mécanique Céleste, Paris, France. We made 275 observations of 148 mutual events from 42 sites. For each observation, information is given about the telescope, the receiver, the site and the observational conditions. This paper gathers together the data and gives a first estimate of the precision. The catalogue of these rare events represents a collection of improved accurate astrometric data useful for the development of dynamical models.

The total solar irradiance varies over a solar cycle of 11 years and maybe over cycles of longer periods. Is the solar diameter variable over time too? A discussion of the solar diameter and its variations must be linked to the limb darkening function (LDF). We introduce a new method to perform high resolution astrometry of the solar diameter from the ground, through the observations of eclipses, using the luminosity evolution of Baily's Bead and the profile of the lunar edge available from satellite data. This approach unifies the definition of solar limb with the inflection point of LDF for eclipses and driftscan or heliometric methods. The method proposed is applied for the videos of the eclipse on 15 January 2010 recorded in Uganda and in India. The result suggests reconsidering the evaluations of the historical eclipses observed with a naked eye.