Related papers: The Warped Plane of the Classical Kuiper Belt
The classical Laplace surface defines the location of circular particle orbits that do not undergo nodal precession around a planet with some obliquity. Close to the planet the surface coincides with the equator of the planet, while far…
We present rotation periods for thousands of active stars in the Kepler field derived from Q3 data. In most cases a second period close to the rotation period was detected, which we interpreted as surface differential rotation (DR). Active…
Transiting giant planets provide a natural opportunity to examine stellar obliquities, which offer clues about the origin and dynamical histories of close-in planets. Hot Jupiters orbiting Sun-like stars show a tendency for obliquity…
It has been found that some quasars are undergoing quasi-periodic variations (most of them with damped amplitudes) in optical bands from long-term monitoring campaigns, but how to explain the origin of such light curve variations still…
Outer satellites of the planets have distant, eccentric orbits that can be highly inclined or even retrograde relative to the equatorial planes of their planets. These irregular orbits cannot have formed by circumplanetary accretion and are…
Gravity darkening induced by rapid stellar rotation provides us with a unique opportunity to characterize the spin-orbit misalignment of a planetary system through analysis of its photometric transit. We use the gravity-darkened transit…
The `linear orbit' of a plane curve of degree d is its orbit in the projective space of dimension d(d+3)/2 parametrizing such curves under the natural action of PGL(3). In this paper we compute the degree of the closure of the linear orbits…
The orbits of some warm Jupiters are highly inclined (20$^\circ$-50$^\circ$) to those of their exterior companions. Comparable misalignments are inferred between the outer and inner portions of some transition discs. These large…
(Abridged) Using an efficient computational approach, we have reconstructed the structure of the dust cloud in the Solar system between 0.5 and 100 AU produced by the Kuiper belt objects. Our simulations offer a 3-D physical model of the…
We analyzed 3 years of data from the Kepler space mission to derive rotation periods of main-sequence stars below 6500 K. Our automated autocorrelation-based method detected rotation periods between 0.2 and 70 days for 34,030 (25.6%) of the…
We develop a semiclassical framework for studying quantum particles constrained to curved surfaces using the momentous quantum mechanics formalism, which extends classical phase-space to include quantum fluctuation variables (moments). In a…
The plausibility of an unseen planet in the outer solar system, and the expected orbit and mass of such a planet, have long been a topic of inquiry and debate. We calculate the long-term orbital stability of distant TNOs, which allows us to…
Timing analyses of accreting black holes often package nodal information in ways that depend on benign choices of time and azimuthal convention. We identify the corresponding pipeline-invariant content for slightly tilted circular rings and…
We present the data acquisition strategy and characterization procedures for the Canada-France Ecliptic Plane Survey (CFEPS), a sub-component of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey. The survey began in early 2003 and as of…
The orbit of Mercury has large values of eccentricity and inclination that cannot be easily explained if this planet formed on a circular and coplanar orbit. Here, we study the evolution of Mercury's orbit during the instability related to…
We investigate the possible origins of real high-inclination Centaurs and trans-neptunian objects using a high-resolution statistical search for stable orbits that simulates their evolution back in time to the epoch when planet formation…
While the vast majority of multiple-planet systems have their orbital angular momentum axes aligned with the spin axis of their host star, Kepler-56 is an exception: its two transiting planets are coplanar yet misaligned by at least 40…
Here we explore a novel approach in order to try to measure the post-Newtonian 1/c^2 Lense-Thirring secular effect induced by the gravitomagnetic field of the Sun on the planetary orbital motion. Due to the relative smallness of the solar…
All existing experimental results are currently interpreted using classical geometry. However, there are theoretical reasons to suspect that at a deeper level, geometry emerges as an approximate macroscopic behavior of a quantum system at…
There are several observational campaigns under way to detect kilometer size foreground Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) through their occultation of background stars. The interpretation of an occultation light curve, unfortunately, is affected…