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In galactic centers, stars and binaries can be injected into low-angular-momentum orbits, resulting in close encounters with the central supermassive black hole (SMBH). Previous works have shown that under different conditions, such close…
The Cassini spacecraft's last orbits directly sampled Saturn's thermosphere and revealed a much more chemically complex environment than previously believed. Observations from the Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) aboard Cassini…
A recent study suggests that CM chondrite-like planetesimals formed in the vicinity of Saturn, in a pressure bump outside the gap carved by proto-Jupiter. While a fraction of these objects was implanted into the asteroid belt as a…
It is well accepted that 'hot Jupiters' did not form in situ, as the temperature in the protoplanetary disc at the radius at which they now orbit would have been too high for planet formation to have occurred. These planets, instead, form…
We propose a new mechanism which explains the existence of enormously sharp edges in the rings of Saturn. This mechanism is based on the synchronization phenomenon due to which the epicycle rotational phases of particles in the ring, under…
Are Saturn's regular satellites young or old? And how old are Enceladus' cratered plains? To answer these questions we computed model surface ages of the most heavily cratered terrains on Saturn's regular icy satellites using new…
The Cassini mission unveiled the intense and diverse activity in Saturn's atmosphere: banded jets, waves, vortices, equatorial oscillations. To set the path towards a better understanding of those phenomena, we performed high-resolution…
Layered semi-convection is a possible candidate to explain Saturn's luminosity excess and the abnormally large radius of some hot Jupiters. In giant planet interiors, it could lead to the creation of density staircases, which are convective…
Small (~50km scale), irregular features seen in Cassini images to be emanating from Saturn's F ring have been termed mini-jets by Attree et al. (2012). One particular mini-jet was tracked over half an orbital period, revealing its evolution…
Saturn has an intense and broad eastward equatorial jet with a complex three-dimensional structure mixed with time variability. The equatorial region experiences strong seasonal insolation variations enhanced by ring shadowing and three of…
Recent observations have revealed evidence for the global oscillations of Jupiter and Saturn, which can potentially provide a new window into the interior structure of giant planets. Motivated by these observations, we study the non-radial…
In a previous paper (Hedman and Nicholson 2013), we developed tools that allowed us to confirm that several of the waves in Saturn's rings were likely generated by resonances with fundamental sectoral normal modes inside Saturn itself. Here…
The orbital distribution of trans-Neptunian objects provides strong evidence for the radial migration of Neptune. The outer planets' orbits are thought to have become unstable during the early stages with Jupiter having scattering…
The modestly eccentric and non-coplanar orbits of the giant planets pose a challenge to solar system formation theories which generally indicate that the giant planets emerged from the protoplanetary disk in nearly perfectly circular and…
The transiting "hot Saturn" HD 149026b, which has the highest mean density of any confirmed planet in the Neptune-Jupiter mass range, has challenged theories of planet formation since its discovery in 2005. Previous investigations could not…
We use the current orbital structure of large (>50km) asteroids in the main asteroid belt to constrain the evolution of the giant planets when they migrated from their primordial orbits to their current ones. Minton & Malhotra (2009) showed…
The potential existence of a distant planet ("Planet Nine") in the Solar system has prompted a re-think about the evolution of planetary systems. As the Sun transitions from a main sequence star into a white dwarf, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus…
Giant planet formation process is still not completely understood. The current most accepted paradigm, the core instability model, explains several observed properties of the solar system's giant planets but, to date, has faced difficulties…
The population of giant planets on short-period orbits can potentially be explained by some flavours of high-eccentricity migration. In this paper we investigate one such mechanism involving "secular chaos", in which secular interactions…
The orbital structure of the asteroid belt holds a record of the Solar System's dynamical history. The current belt only contains ${\rm \sim 10^{-3}}$ Earth masses yet the asteroids' orbits are dynamically excited, with a large spread in…