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It has recently been suggested that the eclipsing polar HU Aquarii is host to at least two giant planets. We have performed highly detailed dynamical analysis of the orbits of those planets and show that the proposed system is highly…
Icy moons with subsurface oceans of liquid water rank among the most promising astrobiological targets in our Solar System. In this work, we assess the feasibility of deploying laser sail technology in precursor life-detection missions. We…
Recent studies have shown that alpha Centauri B might be, from an observational point of view, an ideal candidate for the detection of an Earth-like planet in or near its habitable zone (0.5-0.9AU). We study here if such habitable planets…
'Oumuamua, the first bona-fide interstellar planetesimal, was discovered passing through our Solar System on a hyperbolic orbit. This object was likely dynamically ejected from an extrasolar planetary system after a series of close…
The study of protostellar collapse or infall has proven unusually difficult and controversial. Some historical context will be provided, against which recent advances can be measured. We now have a substantial number of objects with…
Stellar rotation is a strong function of both mass and evolutionary state. Missions such as Kepler and CoRoT provide tens of thousands of rotation periods, drawn from stellar populations that contain objects at a range of masses, ages, and…
The long term dreams to approach Mars requires numerous spacecraft attempts for exploration as well as to understand the perception of the red planet. Before launching a mission, the space probe undergoes critical ground testing and…
Intermediate mass stars and stellar remnants often host planets, and these dynamical systems evolve because of mass loss and tides. This paper considers the combined action of stellar mass loss and tidal dissipation on planetary orbits in…
The ages of the oldest stellar objects in our galaxy provide an independent test of the current cosmological model as they give a lower limit to the age of the Universe. Recent accurate parallaxes by the Gaia space mission, accurate…
This review describes our current understanding of interstellar extinction. This differ substantially from the ideas of the 20th century. With infrared surveys of hundreds of millions of stars over the entire sky, such as 2MASS,…
We summarize some of the compelling new scientific opportunities for understanding stars and stellar systems that can be enabled by sub-mas angular resolution, UV/Optical spectral imaging observations, which can reveal the details of the…
In recent years a paradigm shift has occurred in exoplanet science, wherein low-mass stars are increasingly viewed as a foundational pillar of the search for potentially habitable worlds in the solar neighborhood. However, the formation…
The Solar Gravitational Lens (SGL) enables resolved imaging and spectroscopy of nearby terrestrial exoplanets, but useful science begins only after a spacecraft reaches roughly 650-900 astronomical units (AU). A 20 yr lower-bound trip to…
The search for exoplanets has encompassed a broad range of stellar environments, from single stars in the solar neighborhood to multiple stars and various open clusters. The stellar environment has a profound effect on planet formation and…
Hundred meter sized objects have been identified by the Cassini spacecraft in Saturn's A ring through the so-called "propeller" features they create in the ring. These moonlets should migrate, due to their gravitational interaction with the…
Protostellar outflows and jets play a vital role in star formation as they carry away excess angular momentum from the inner disk surface, allowing the material to be transferred toward the central protostar. Theoretically, low velocity and…
To settle the question of the nature of the interstellar object 1I/'Oumuamua requires in-situ observations via a spacecraft, as the object is already out of range of existing telescopes. Most previous proposals for reaching 1I/'Oumuamua…
WFIRST is the highest priority space mission of the Decadal review, however, it is unlikely to begin in this decade primarily due to a anticipated NASA budget that is unlikely to have sufficient resources to fund such a mission. For this…
`Oumuamua and Borisov were the first two interstellar objects confirmed in the Solar system. The upcoming commencement of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space of Time (LSST) will enhance greatly the discovery rate of…
Detection and orbit determination for thousands of planets with periods up to about 40 years would be obtained by astrometry from two Gaia-like missions, results which cannot be obtained by any other mission, planned or proposed. A billion…