Related papers: A collisionless scenario for Uranus tilting
We consider the deformation that has recently been observed in the inner part of the circumstellar disk around Beta Pictoris with the HST. Our recent ground based adaptive optics coronographic observations confirm that the inner disk is…
Gas giants orbiting interior to the ice line are thought to have been displaced from their formation locations by processes that remain debated. Here we uncover several new metallicity trends, which together may indicate that two competing…
Putative natural massive satellites (exomoons) has gained increasing attention, where they orbit Jupiter-like planets within the habitable zone of their host main sequence star. An exomoon is expected to move within the equatorial plane of…
A simple dynamical model is employed to study the possible orbital evolution of scattered planets and phase plane analysis is used to classify the parameter space and solutions. Our results reconfirm that there is always an increase in…
(Abridged) In planetary systems with two or more giant planets, dynamical instabilities can lead to collisions or ejections through strong planet--planet scattering. Previous studies for simple initial configurations with two equal-mass…
There are still many open questions regarding the nature of Uranus and Neptune, the outermost planets in the Solar System. In this review we summarize the current-knowledge about Uranus and Neptune with a focus on their composition and…
The origin of the irregular satellites of the giant planets has been long debated since their discovery. Their dynamical features argue against an in-situ formation suggesting they are captured bodies, yet there is no global consensus on…
We performed numerical simulations of the obliquity evolution of Mars during the Noachian era, at which time the giant planets were on drastically different orbits than today. For the preferred primordial configuration of the planets we…
Outer satellites of the planets have distant, eccentric orbits that can be highly inclined or even retrograde relative to the equatorial planes of their planets. These irregular orbits cannot have formed by circumplanetary accretion and are…
Chaotic dynamics are expected during and after planet formation, and a leading mechanism to explain large eccentricities of gas giant exoplanets is planet-planet gravitational scattering. The same scattering has been invoked to explain…
The Ice Giants represent a unique and relatively poorly characterized class of planets that have been largely unexplored since the brief Voyager 2 flyby in the late 1980's. Uranus is particularly enigmatic, due to its extreme axial tilt,…
Bailey et al.~(2016) and Gomes et al.~(2016) recently suggested that the 6 degree misalignment between the Sun's rotational equator and the orbital plane of the major planets may be produced by the forcing from the hypothetical Planet Nine…
Some of the satellites in the Solar System, including the Moon, appear to have been captured from heliocentric orbits at some point in their past, and then have evolved to the present configurations. The exact process of how this trapping…
From the numerous detected planets outside the Solar system, no terrestrial planet comparable to our Earth has been discovered so far. The search for an Exo-Earth is certainly a big challenge which may require the detections of planetary…
Since the 1990s, RANS practitioners have observed spontaneous unsteadiness in RANS simulations. Some have suggested deliberately using this as a method of resolving large turbulent structures. However, to date, no one has produced a…
The Neptunian satellite system is unusual, comprising Triton, a large ($\sim2700$ km) moon on a close-in, circular, yet retrograde orbit, flanked by Nereid, the largest irregular satellite ($\sim$300 km) on a highly eccentric orbit. Capture…
Several properties of the Solar System, including the wide radial spacing of the giant planets, can be explained if planets radially migrated by exchanging orbital energy and momentum with outer disk planetesimals. Neptune's…
We present the results of hydrodynamic simulations of the formation and subsequent orbital evolution of giant planets embedded in a circumbinary disc. We assume that a 20 earth masses core has migrated to the edge of the inner cavity formed…
(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…
Over the course of the past two decades, observational surveys have unveiled the intricate orbital structure of the Kuiper Belt, a field of icy bodies orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune. In addition to a host of readily-predictable orbital…