Related papers: Speed limit on Neptune migration imposed by Saturn…
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…
Aims: We aim to determine whether Jupiter's obliquity is bound to remain exceptionally small in the Solar System, or if it could grow in the future and reach values comparable to those of the other giant planets. Methods: The spin axis of…
We calculate the eccentricity excitation of asteroids produced by the sweeping $\nu_6$ secular resonance during the epoch of planetesimal-driven giant planet migration in the early history of the solar system. We derive analytical…
Uranus' startlingly large obliquity of 98 degrees has yet to admit a satisfactory explanation. The most widely accepted hypothesis involving a giant impactor that tipped Uranus onto its side encounters several difficulties with regards to…
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…
Neptune's present axial tilt of approximately 28 deg. with respect to its orbital plane can be explained by collisions that its primordial core may have experienced with surrounding planetary embryos during the final stages of its…
We explore conventional Neptune migration model with one additional planet of mass at 0.1-2.0 Me. This planet inhabited in the 3:2 mean motion resonance with Neptune during planet migration epoch, and then escaped from the Kuiper belt when…
We explore planetary migration scenarios for formation of high inclination Neptune Trojans (NTs) and how they are affected by the planetary migration of Neptune and Uranus. If Neptune and Uranus's eccentricity and inclination were damped…
Early migration damped Neptune's eccentricity. Here, we assume that the damped value was much smaller than the value observed today, and show that the closest flyby of $\sim 0.1 \; \mathrm{M_{\odot}}$ star over $\sim 4.5 \mathrm{\; Gyr}$ in…
The inner moons of Jupiter and Saturn migrate outwards due to tidal energy dissipation within the planets, the details of which remain poorly understood. We demonstrate that resonance locking between moons and internal oscillation modes of…
Tidal interactions between moons and planets can have major effects on the orbits, spins, and thermal evolution of the moons. In the Saturn system, tidal dissipation in the planet transfers angular momentum from Saturn to the moons, causing…
At the supranuclear densities achieved inside a neutron star, matter may exhibit extreme properties. In particular, it may be the case that a suitable average of the speed of sound squared exceeds the so-called conformal limit, i.e.,…
Tidal interactions between Saturn and its satellites play a crucial role in both the orbital migration of the satellites and the heating of their interiors. Therefore constraining the tidal dissipation of Saturn (here the ratio k2/Q) opens…
(Abridged) The solar system gas giant planets are oblate due to their rapid rotation. A measurement of the planet's projected oblateness would constrain the planet's rotational period. Planets that are synchronously rotating with their…
Saturn's largest satellite, Titan, has stratospheric wind speeds that may be up to ~210 m/sec [1], circling Titan in about a day compared to Titan's slow 16-day rotation. Theoretical models to explain such super-rotating winds are not well…
A Hamiltonian model is constructed for the spin axis of a planet perturbed by a nearby planet with both planets in orbit about star. We expand the planet-planet gravitational potential perturbation to first order in orbital inclinations and…
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,…
Recently, Sheppard et al. (2016) presented the discovery of seven new trans-Neptunian objects with moderate eccentricities, perihelia beyond 40 AU, and semimajor axes beyond 50 AU. Like the few previously known objects on similar orbits,…
The present-day orbit distribution of the Neptune Trojans is a powerful probe of the dynamical environment of the outer solar system during the late stages of planet migration. In this work, I conservatively debias the inclination,…
Giant collisions can account for Uranus's and Neptune's large obliquities, yet generating two planets with widely different tilts and strikingly similar spin rates is a low-probability event. Trapping into a secular spin-orbit resonance, a…