Related papers: The Warped Plane of the Classical Kuiper Belt
The accelerated Kepler problem is obtained by adding a constant acceleration to the classical two-body Kepler problem. This setting models the dynamics of a jet-sustaining accretion disk and its content of forming planets as the disk loses…
Non-Keplerian dynamics of planetary orbits manifest in the transit light-curve as variations of different types. In addition to Transit Timing Variations (TTV's), the shape of the transits contains additional information on variations in…
Measuring the size distribution of small (km-scale) KBOs can help constrain models of Solar System formation and planetary migration. Such small, distant bodies are hard to detect with current or planned telescopes, but can be identified as…
In galactic nuclei, the gravitational potential is dominated by the central supermassive black hole, so stars follow quasi-Keplerian orbits. These orbits are distorted by gravitational forces from other stars, leading to long-term orbital…
The recent discovery of a planetary transit in the star HD 209458, and the subsequent highly precise observation of the transit lightcurve with Hubble Space Telescope, is encouraging to search for any phenomena that might induce small…
The Kuiper belt is a population of icy bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. A particularly puzzling and up-to-now unexplained feature of the Kuiper belt is the so-called `kernel', a concentration of orbits with semimajor axes a~44 AU,…
To explain the unusual distribution of Kuiper Belt objects, several authors have advocated the existence of a super-Earth planet in the outer solar system. It has recently been proposed that a 10 M$_{\oplus}$ object with an orbit of 700 AU…
To date at least 10 highly flattened planes of dwarf galaxies are claimed to have been discovered in the Local Universe. The origin of these planes of galaxies remains unknown. One suggestion is that they are related to the large-scale…
Extensive time-resolved observations of Kuiper Belt object 2001 QG298 show a lightcurve with a peak-to-peak variation of 1.14 +-0.04 magnitudes and single-peaked period of 6.8872 +- 0.0002 hr. The mean absolute magnitude is 6.85 magnitudes…
More and more binary pulsars show significant secular variations, in which the measured projected semi-major axis, $\dot{x}^{obs}$, and the first derivative of orbital period, $\dot{P}_{b}^{obs}$, are several order of magnitude larger than…
The radii of some transiting extrasolar giant planets are larger than would be expected by the standard theory. We address this puzzle with the model of coupled radius-orbit tidal evolution developed by \citet{Ibgui_and_Burrows_2009}. The…
The Kepler space mission has detected a large number of exoplanets in multiple transiting planet systems. Previous studies found that these Kepler multiple planet systems exhibit an intra-system uniformity, namely planets in the same system…
The herein presented analytical framework fully describes the motion of coplanar systems consisting of a stellar binary and a planet orbiting both stars on orbital as well as secular timescales. Perturbations of the Runge-Lenz vector are…
We derive the conservative secular evolution of precessing compact binaries to second post-Newtonian order accuracy, with leading-order spin-orbit, spin-spin and mass quadrupole-monopole contributions included. The emerging closed system of…
The discovery of Sedna places new constraints on the origin and evolution of our solar system. Here we investigate the possibility that a close encounter with another star produced the observed edge of the Kuiper belt, at roughly 50 AU, and…
The vast majority of well studied giant-planet systems, including the Solar System, are nearly coplanar which implies dissipation within a primordial gas disk. however, intrinsic instability may lead to planet-planet scattering, which often…
The dynamical structure of the Kuiper belt beyond 50 au is not well understood. Here we report results of a numerical model with long-range, slow and grainy migration of Neptune. The model implies that bodies scattered outward by Neptune to…
The orbital motion of a binary system is characterized by various characteristic temporal intervals which, by definition, are different from each other: the draconitic, anomalistic and sidereal periods. They all coincide in the Keplerian…
The dynamics of the high-inclination Plutinos is systematically studied. We first present the peculiar features of the 2:3 Neptune mean motion resonance (NMMR) for inclined orbits, especially for the correlation of resonant amplitude…
KIC 8462852 is a star in the Kepler field that exhibits almost unique behaviour. The deep, irregular and aperiodic dips in its light curve have been interpreted as the breakup of a large exocomet on a highly eccentric orbit whose…