Second Bern Meeting

The ATTACK team gathered for its second, hybrid, meeting in Bern during the first week of June 2026, including the core members, multiple Early Career Scientists, as well as guest colleagues who were interested by our team’s theme and contributed remotely. Our activities comprised of the presentation of multiple studies relevant to the team’s research topics and the extensive discussion of further actions to be followed. Our current results encompass experimental and theoretical investigations for the chemical and photo-dissociative processes in Titan’s upper atmosphere, novel analyses for the characterization of Titan’s gas and haze composition from Cassini and JWST observations, updated photochemical models including isomer-specific abundances and estimates for the formation of polyaromatic hydrocarbons, as well as, experimental and theoretical investigations for processes occurring on haze and cloud particles in Titan’s atmosphere.

The combination of these studies expands the frontiers of our understanding of physical and chemical processes on Titan: they permit the evaluation of the gaseous abundances  of previously non-considered species in the atmosphere that can be cross correlated against unidentified features in current observations or be used for the derivation of abundance upper limits; they extend the current understanding in the transition from gases to particles in the upper atmosphere; and  they illuminate the interplay among haze, gases and clouds while identifying novel mechanisms for the possible treatment of ices by high-energy radiation. Moreover, while our research topic focuses on Titan’s atmosphere and surface, our activities have broad implications for planetary atmospheres in general, including exoplanets (as demonstrated in our publications). Our so far activities have resulted in multiple publications, while further collaborative studies are currently underway.

This second meeting marks the end of the ISSI related activities for our team. We are grateful to the ISSI organization for this unique collaboration opportunity, and we warmly thank Mark, Sabina Raducan, Cosima-Lea Baier, Xeila Moneagudo, Dominique Fuchs and Willi Wäffler for their outstanding hosting and assistance that helped us advance in our common research interests.

 

 

 

Participants

Daniela Ascenzi	University of Tronto	Guest	Remote
Nadia Balucani	University of Perugia	Core	remote
Audrey Chatain	LATMOS	Core	in person
Athena Coustenis	Observatoire de Paris	Core	in person
Antoine Damiens	Université Reims Champagne Ardenne	ECS	remote
Joshua Ford	University of Bristol	ECS	in person
Elle Hanson	University of Amsterdam	ECS	in person
Elsa Henault	Université Grenoble Alpes	ECS	in person
Devin Hoover	University of Arizona	ECS	remote
David  Jacquemart	Sorbonne Université	Guest	remote
Panayotis Lavvas	Université Reims Champagne Ardenne	Core	in person
Nathan Le Guennic	Université Reims Champagne Ardenne	ECS	in person
Jonathan Lunine	Caltech	Guest	remote
Ashleigh Hartwig	Florida International University	ECS	in person
Zachary McQueen	NASA GSFC	ECS	in person
Alexander M. Mebel	Florida International University	Core	in person
Conor A. Nixon	NASA GSFC	Core	in person
Anezina Solomonidou	Hellenic Space Center	Core	remote
Nick Teanby	University of Bristol	Core	in person
Sandrine Vinatier	Observatoire de Paris	Core	in person
Véronique Vuitton	Université Grenoble Alpes	Core	in person