Related papers: Did Saturn's rings form during the Late Heavy Bomb…

The dynamical structure of the Solar System can be explained by a period of orbital instability experienced by the giant planets. While a late instability was originally proposed to explain the Late Heavy Bombardment, recent work favors an…

We use the planar circular restricted three-body problem in order to numerically investigate the orbital dynamics of orbits of a spacecraft, or a comet, or an asteroid in the Saturn-Titan system in a scattering region around the Titan. The…

It is generally accepted today that our solar system has undergone a phase during which the orbits of the giant planets became very unstable. In recent years, many studies have identified traces of this event and have provided reasonable…

An instability among the giant planets' orbits can match many aspects of the Solar System's current orbital architecture. We explore the possibility that this dynamical instability was triggered by the close passage of a star or substellar…

Many features of the outer solar system are replicated in numerical simulations if the giant planets undergo an orbital instability that ejects one or more ice giants. During this instability, Jupiter and Saturn's orbits diverge, crossing…

At the solar equinox in August 2009, the Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) onboard Cassini showed the lowest Saturn's ring temperatures ever observed. Detailed radiative transfer models show that the observed equinox temperatures of…

Spacecraft observations of Saturn's rings show evidence of an active aggregation-disaggregation process triggered by periodic influences from the nearby moons. This leads to clumping and break-up of the ring particles at time-scales of the…

The wealth of observational data about Jupiter and Saturn provides strong constraints to guide our understanding of the formation of giant planets. The size of the core and the total amount of heavy elements in the envelope have been…

We investigate the effects of varying Saturn's orbit on the atmospheric circulation and surface methane distribution of Titan. Using a new general circulation model of Titan's atmosphere, we simulate its climate under four characteristic…

As it has already done for Earth, the sun, and the stars, seismology has the potential to radically change the way the interiors of giant planets are studied. In a sequence of events foreseen by only a few, observations of Saturn's rings by…

The Nice model of Gomes et al. (2005) suggests that the migration of the giant planets caused a planetesimal clearing event which led to the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB) at 880 Myr. Here we investigate the IR emission from the Kuiper belt…

Many dynamical aspects of the solar system can be explained by the outer planets experiencing a period of orbital instability sometimes called the Nice Model. Though often correlated with a perceived delayed spike in the lunar cratering…

The dynamics of the outer regular satellites of Saturn are driven primarily by the outward migration of Titan, but several independent constraints on Titan's migration are difficult to reconcile with the current resonant orbit of the small…

The gravity field of a giant planet is typically our best window into its interior structure and composition. Through comparison of a model planet's calculated gravitational potential with the observed potential, inferences can be made…

In a recent paper we proposed that the giant planets' primordial orbits may have been eccentric (~0.05), and used a suite of dynamical simulations to show outcomes of the giant planet instability that are consistent with their present-day…

Using astrometric observations spanning more than a century and including a large set of Cassini data, we determine Saturn's tidal parameters through their current effects on the orbits of the eight main and four coorbital moons. We have…

Models of the dynamical evolution of the early solar system following the dispersal of the gaseous protoplanetary disk have been widely successful in reconstructing the current orbital configuration of the giant planets. Statistically, some…

At the end of the Cassini mission, Saturn's rings have been claimed to be spectacularly young compared to the age of the Solar System: their unusual ice-rich composition corresponds to initially pure ice rings polluted by interplanetary…

Tidal disruption and engulfment events around main-sequence stars -- such as the luminous red nova ZTF SLRN-2020, a candidate planetary-engulfment event -- reveal the destruction of close-in giant planets. While current observations focus…

Until 2013, only the giant planets were known to host ring systems. In June 2013, a stellar occulation revealed the presence of narrow and dense rings around Chariklo, a small Centaur object that orbits between Saturn and Uranus. Meanwhile,…