Related papers: Are there rings around Pluto?
A heliocentric dust ring on Venus orbit was discovered following observations by the Helios spacecraft, and then confirmed thanks to observations by STEREO and the Parker Solar Probe. The impact risk it poses needs to be evaluated for any…
Systematic geomorphological mapping and detailed landform analysis using the highest resolution images obtained by the New Horizons spacecraft reveal the presence of a range of differentiable terrains on Charon, the largest moon of Pluto,…
The infrared excess around the white dwarf G29-38 can be explained by emission from an opaque flat ring of dust with an inner radius 0.14 of the radius of the Sun and an outer radius approximately equal to the Sun's. This ring lies within…
We examine the ability of impacts by Kuiper Belt debris to cause regolith exchange between objects in the Pluto system. We find that ejecta velocities from KB impacts are too low to escape from Pluto and Charon. However, ejecta can escape…
We have obtained a full suite of Spitzer observations to characterize the debris disk around HR 8799 and to explore how its properties are related to the recently discovered set of three massive planets orbiting the star. We distinguish…
Unexpected clustering in the orbital elements of minor bodies beyond the Kuiper belt has led to speculations that our solar system actually hosts nine planets, the eight established plus a hypothetical "Planet Nine". Several recent studies…
We numerically investigate the possibility that a close stellar encounter could account for the high inclinations of the Kuiper belt, as originally proposed by Ida, Larwood and Burkert, however we consider encounters with pericenters within…
Dust emission around the nearby star epsilon Eridani has been imaged using a new submillimetre camera (SCUBA at the JCMT). At 850 microns wavelength a ring of dust is seen, peaking at 60 AU from the star and with much lower emission inside…
The observed size distribution of Kuiper belt objects (KBOs)--small icy and rocky solar system bodies orbiting beyond Neptune--is well described by a power law at large KBO sizes. However, recent work by Bernstein et al. (2003) indicates…
A statistical study of the environment around Polar Ring Galaxies is presented. Two kinds of search are performed: 1) a study of the concentration and diameters of all the objects surrounding the Polar Rings, within a search field 5 times…
Here we report WFPC2 observations of the Quaoar-Weywot Kuiper belt binary. From these observations we find that Weywot is on an elliptical orbit with eccentricity of 0.14 {\pm} 0.04, period of 12.438 {\pm} 0.005 days, and a semi-major axis…
Pluto's terrains display a diversity of crater retention ages ranging from areas with no identifiable craters to heavily cratered terrains. This variation in crater densities is consistent with geologic activity occurring throughout Pluto's…
Pluto's surface displays a wide variety of geologic units from smooth plains to extremely rugged mountainous expanses. These terrains range in age from young, actively resurfaced regions (no observable craters even in the highest-resolution…
Saturn's rings consist of a huge number of water ice particles, with a tiny addition of rocky material. They form a flat disk, as the result of an interplay of angular momentum conservation and the steady loss of energy in dissipative…
In this paper I describe numerical calculations of the motion of particles in a disk about a solar-mass object perturbed by a planet on a circular orbit with mass greater than 0.001 of the stellar mass. A simple algorithm for simulating…
We have considered polar ring galaxy candidates, the images of which can be found in the SDSS. The sample of 78 galaxies includes the most reliable candidates from the SPRC and PRC catalogs, some of which already have kinematic…
We analyze two multi-chord stellar occultations by Pluto observed on July 18th, 2012 and May 4th, 2013, and monitored respectively from five and six sites. They provide a total of fifteen light-curves, twelve of them being used for a…
The formation of Pluto's small satellites - Styx, Nix, Keberos and Hydra - remains a mystery. Their orbits are nearly circular and are near mean-motion resonances and nearly coplanar with Charon's orbit. One scenario suggests that they all…
We employ an efficient numerical approach to simulate a stationary distribution of test objects, which results from their gravitational scattering on the four giant planets, with accounting for effects of mean motion resonances. Using the…
When a planetary tidal disk -like Saturn's rings- spreads beyond the Roche radius (inside which planetary tides prevent aggregation), satellites form and migrate away. Here, we show that most regular satellites in the solar system probably…