Welcome to the Planetary Chemistry Laboratory

The Laboratory is located in the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department of Washington University in St. Louis under the direction of Bruce Fegley and Katharina Lodders.

Links

news

people

research

reprints

courses

Dr. Fegley and Dr. Lodders apply chemistry to key problems in astronomy, cosmochemistry, and planetary science.  Experimental studies and theoretical models are used to study a wide range of problems related to the chemistry taking place in these environments:

• atmospheres and circumstellar envelopes around cool stars

• brown dwarfs (so-called failed stars)

• extrasolar gas giant planets

• Jupiter's satellite Io

• meteorite parent bodies

• the gas giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus

• the lower atmosphere and surface of Venus

• the solar nebula

• Titan, which is Saturn's largest satellite

A list of some of our ongoing and recent projects is given below.

• atmospheric chemistry of the brown dwarf Gliese 229 B

• formation of silicon carbide grains around red giant stars

• iron metal oxidation in the solar nebula

• the oxygen isotope mixing (OIM) model for the composition of Mars

• tremolite decomposition on Venus

• volcanic gas chemistry on Io