Related papers: Constraints on planet X/Nemesis from Solar System'…
Transiting extrasolar planets provide an opportunity to study the mass-radius relation of planets as well as their internal structure. The existence of a secondary eclipse enables further study of the thermal properties of the the planet by…
The architecture of exoplanetary systems is often different from the solar system, with some exoplanets being in close orbits around their host stars and having orbital periods of only a few days. In analogy to interactions between stars in…
Planets that revolve around a binary pair of stars are known as circumbinary planets. The orbital motion of the stars around their center of mass causes a periodic variation in the total instellation incident upon a circumbinary planet.…
Due to their extremely small luminosity compared to the stars they orbit, planets outside our own Solar System are extraordinarily difficult to detect directly in optical light. Careful photometric monitoring of distant stars, however, can…
Although current sensitivity limits are such that true Solar System analogs remain challenging to detect, numerous planetary systems have been discovered that are very different from our own Solar System. The majority of systems harbor a…
Transiting planet discoveries have largely been restricted to the short-period or low-periastron distance regimes due to the bias inherent in the geometric transit probability. Through the refinement of planetary orbital parameters, and…
The planets of our solar system formed from a gas-dust disk. However, there are some properties of the solar system that are peculiar in this context. First, the cumulative mass of all objects beyond Neptune (TNOs) is only a fraction of…
Since the first discovery of an extrasolar planetary system more than a decade ago, hundreds more have been discovered. Surprisingly, many of these systems harbor Jupiter-class gas giants located close to the central star, at distances of…
The solar system's dynamical state can be explained by an orbital instability among the giant planets. A recent model has proposed that the giant planet instability happened during terrestrial planet formation. This scenario has been shown…
Astronomical observations reveal that protoplanetary disks around young stars commonly have ring- and gap-like structures in their dust distributions. These features are associated with pressure bumps trapping dust particles at specific…
Understanding a planet's atmosphere is a necessary condition for understanding not only the planet itself, but also its formation, structure, evolution, and habitability, This puts a premium on obtaining spectra, and developing credible…
A body in Solar orbit beyond the Kuiper belt exhibits an annual parallax that exceeds its apparent proper motion by up to many orders of magnitude. Apparent motion of this body along the parallactic ellipse will deflect the angular position…
This chapter concerns the long-term dynamical evolution of planetary systems from both theoretical and observational perspectives. We begin by discussing the planet-planet interactions that take place within our own Solar System. We then…
The exotic range of known planetary systems has provoked an equally exotic range of physical explanations for their diverse architectures. However, constraining formation processes requires mapping the observed exoplanet population to that…
The Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) generically predicts a violation of the strong version of the equivalence principle. As a result the gravitational dynamics of a system depends on the external gravitational field in which the system…
We show that short-term perturbations among massive planets in multiple planet systems can result in radial velocity variations of the central star which differ substantially from velocity variations derived assuming the planets are…
Stars with a different vertical motion relative to the galactic disk have a different average acceleration. According to Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) theories they should therefore have a different average orbital velocity while…
The architecture and evolution of planetary systems are shaped in part by stellar flybys. Within this context, we look at stellar encounters which are too weak to immediately destabilize a planetary system but are nevertheless strong enough…
Approximately half of the planets discovered by NASA's Kepler mission are in systems where just a single planet transits its host star, and the remaining planets are observed to be in multi-planet systems. Recent analyses have reported a…
Rotation is thought to drive cyclic magnetic activity in the Sun and Sun-like stars. Stellar dynamos, however, are poorly understood owing to the scarcity of observations of rotation and magnetic fields in stars. Here, inferences are drawn…