Related papers: 2008 LC18: a potentially unstable Neptune Trojan
Context. Trojan asteroids of Mars date from an early phase of solar system evolution. Based on a sample of <10 asteroids, MT distribution has been previously shown to be both asymmetric and inhomogeneous with population evolution dominated…
Centimeter and meter sized solid particles in protoplanetary disks are trapped within long lived high pressure regions, creating opportunities for collapse into planetesimals and planetary embryos. We study the accumulations in the stable…
Neptune's external mean motion resonances play an important role in sculpting the observed population of transneptunian objects (TNOs). The population of scattering TNOs are known to 'stick' to Neptune's resonances while evolving in…
In 1984, three telescopes in South America recorded an occultation of a star near Neptune. It was attributed to the existence of a partial ring or ring arc. The existence of ring arcs around Neptune was confirmed during subsequent years via…
We present a detailed analysis of the orbital stability of the HD 181433 planetary system, finding it to exhibit strong dynamical instability across a wide range of orbital eccentricities, semi-major axes, and mutual inclinations. We also…
We present a parameter study of the possibility of tidally triggered disk instability. Using a restricted N-body model which allows for a survey of an extended parameter space, we show that a passing dwarf star with a mass between 0.1 and 1…
In previous hydrodynamical simulations, we found a mechanism for nearly circular binary stars, like Kepler-413, to trap two planets in a stable 1:1 resonance. Therefore, the stability of coorbital configurations becomes a relevant question…
We study the Kozai dynamics affecting the orbital evolution of transneptunian objects being captured or not in MMR with Neptune. We provide energy level maps of the type ({\omega},q) describing the possible orbital paths from Neptune up to…
In (Fusco et. al., 2011) several periodic orbits of the Newtonian N-body problem have been found as minimizers of the Lagrangian action in suitable sets of T-periodic loops, for a given T>0. Each of them share the symmetry of one Platonic…
We report near-infrared (0.7-2.5 micron) reflectance spectra for each of the six target asteroids of the forthcoming NASA Discovery-class mission Lucy. Five Jupiter Trojans (the binary (617) Patroclus system, (3548) Eurybates, (21900) Orus,…
The Trojan asteroids orbit about the Lagrangian points of Jupiter and the residence times about their present location are very long for most of them. If these bodies originated in the outer Solar System, they should be mainly composed of…
Discoveries of exoplanets using the radial velocity method are progressively reaching out to increasingly longer orbital periods as the duration of surveys continues to climb. The improving sensitivity to potential Jupiter analogs is…
Beyond orbital periods of 10 days, there is a dearth of known transiting gas giants. On longer orbits, planets are less affected by their host star, and become ideal probes of planet formation, migration and evolution. We report the…
We investigate the orbital stability close to the unique L4-point Jupiter binary Trojan asteroid 624 Hektor. The gravitational potential of 624 Hektor is calculated using the polyhedron model with observational data of 2038 faces and 1021…
We report on H-band, ground-based observations of a transit of the hot Neptune GJ 436b. Once combined to achieve sampling equivalent to archived observations taken with Spitzer, our measurements reach comparable precision levels. We analyze…
The Trojan population consists of two swarms of asteroids following the same orbit as Jupiter and located at the L4 and L5 Lagrange points of the Jupiter-Sun system (leading and following Jupiter by 60 degrees). The asteroid 617 Patroclus…
The long-standing co-orbital asteroids have been thought to be the possible source of zodiacal dust ring around the orbit of Venus, but inconsistent conclusions on the orbital stability thus existence of Venus Trojans are found in…
The results of the numerical investigations of the evolution of orbits of trans-Neptunian bodies at the 2 : 3 resonance with Neptune are presented. The gravitational influence of the four giant planets was taken into account. For identical…
We investigate the possibility that the large orbital eccentricity of the transiting Neptune-mass planet Gliese 436b is maintained in the face of tidal dissipation by a second planet in the system. We find that the currently observed…
We surveyed 1.75 square degrees of sky near Neptune to an R-band 50% detection efficiency of 25.8 mags (corresponding to radii of about 17 km for an assumed albedo of 0.04). We discovered one new outer satellite, Psamathe (S/2003 N1), about…