Soft X-ray Emissions from Planets, Moons, and Comets

A wide variety of solar system bodies are now known to radiate in the soft x-ray energy (<5 keV) regime. These include planets (Earth, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Mars): bodies having thick atmospheres, with or without intrinsic magnetic field; planetary satellites (Moon, Io, Europa, Ganymede): bodies with thin or no atmospheres; and comets and the Io plasma torus: bodies having extended tenuous atmospheres. Several different mechanisms have been proposed to explain the generation of soft x-rays from these objects, whereas in the hard x-ray energy range (>10 keV) x-rays result mainly from the electron bremsstrahlung process. In this paper we present a brief review of the x-ray observations on each of the planetary bodies and discuss their characteristics and proposed source mechanisms.