Related papers: How Well Do We Know the Orbits of the Outer Planet…
The era of outer planet orbiters (Galileo, Juno and Cassini) is advancing our understanding of how the radiation belts of Jupiter and Saturn are structured, form and evolve well beyond what had been possible during the age of flyby missions…
Among the group of extrasolar planets, transiting planets provide a great opportunity to obtain direct measurements for the basic physical properties, such as mass and radius of these objects. These planets are therefore highly important in…
Most detected transiting planets have orbits which would fit within the one of Mercury, exposing them to intense stellar irradiation and interactions that significantly alter their properties. In contrast, colder planets with longer orbital…
Based upon a simple cosmological model with no expansion, we find that the rotational terms appearing in the G/"odel universe are too small to explain the Pioneer anomaly. Although it contributes, universal rotation is not the cause of the…
Most extrasolar planets currently known were discovered by means of an indirect method that measures the stellar wobble caused by the planet. We previously studied a triple system composed of a star and a nearby binary on circular coplanar…
Motivated by the large number of compact extrasolar planetary systems discovered by the Kepler Mission, this paper considers perturbations due to possible additional outer planets. The discovered compact systems sometimes contain multiple…
The occultation of background stars by foreground Solar system objects, such as planets and asteroids, has been widely used as an observational probe to study physical properties associated with the foreground sample. Similarly, the…
From simulations of transit observations, it is found that the detectability of extrasolar planets depends only on two parameters: The signal-to-noise ratio during a transit, and the number of data points observed during transits. All other…
The fields of astronomy and astrophysics are currently engaged in an unprecedented era of discovery as recent missions have revealed thousands of exoplanets orbiting other stars. While the Kepler Space Telescope mission has enabled most of…
This treatise outlines how a non-systematic based Pioneer anomaly, with its implied violation (re: 'low' mass bodies only) of both general relativity's weak equivalence principle and the Newtonian inverse-square law, can be successfully…
We develop an analytic model for transit timing variations produced by orbital conjunctions between gravitationally interacting planets. If the planetary orbits have tight orbital spacing, which is a common case among the Kepler planets,…
Future missions like Roman, HabEx, and LUVOIR will directly image exoplanets in reflected light. While current near infrared direct imaging searches are only sensitive to young, self-luminous planets whose brightness is independent of their…
Consider a planet with its orbital angular momentum axis aligned with the spin axis of its host star. To what extent does an inclined distant companion (giant planet or binary star) affect this alignment? We provide an analytic,…
The inverse square law of gravity is poorly probed by experimental tests at distances of ~ 10 AUs. Recent analysis of the trajectory of the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft have shown an unmodeled acceleration directed toward the Sun which was…
The orbital distributions of dust particles in interplanetary space are inferred from several meteoroid data sets under the constraints imposed by the orbital evolution of the particles due to the planetary gravity and Poynting-Robertson…
Many binary minor planets (BMPs; both binary asteroids and binary Trans-Neptunians objects; TNOs) are known to exist in the Solar system. The currently observed orbital and physical properties of BMPs hold essential information and clues…
The orbital dynamics of a test particle moving in the non-spherically symmetric field of a rotating oblate primary is impacted also by certain indirect, mixed effects arising from the interplay of the different Newtonian and post-Newtonian…
Tremendous progress in the science of extrasolar planets has been achieved since the discovery of a Jupiter orbiting the nearby Sun-like star 51 Pegasi in 1995. Theoretical models have now reached enough maturity to predict the…
We discuss the interpretation of distortions to stellar spectral lines with particular attention to line bisectors in the presence of an orbiting planetary companion. We present a simple model whereby light reflected by the companion can…
Planets reflect and linearly polarize the radiation that they receive from their host stars. The emergent polarization is sensitive to aspects of the planet atmosphere such as the gas composition and the occurrence of condensates and their…