Related papers: Dynamical capture in the Pluto-Charon system
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…
In this paper we investigate the formation of narrow planetary rings such as those found around Uranus and Saturn through the tidal disruption of a weak, gravitationally bound satellite that migrates within its Roche limit. Using $N$-body…
In order to understand the orbital history of Galactic halo objects, such as globular clusters, authors usually assume a static potential for our Galaxy with parameters that appear at the present-day. According to the standard paradigm of…
Objects gravitationally captured by the Earth-Moon system are commonly called temporarily captured orbiters (TCOs), natural Earth satellites, or minimoons. TCOs are a crucially important subpopulation of near-Earth objects (NEOs) to…
Carbonaceous chondrites are samples from planetesimals that formed 2-4 million years after solar system formation began. They consist of distinct dust components formed at different times and locations in the accretion disk and whose…
The main goal of this paper is to set up a numerical laboratory for the study of the slow evolution of the density and of the pressure tensor profiles of an otherwise collisionless stellar system, as a result of the interactions with a…
Thousands of confirmed and candidate exoplanets have been identified in recent years. Consequently, theoretical research on the formation and dynamical evolution of planetary systems has seen a boost, and the processes of planet-planet…
This paper shows that gravitating bodies travelling through the Galaxy can trap lighter interstellar particles that pass nearby with small relative velocities onto temporarily-bound orbits. The capture mechanism is driven by the Galactic…
We investigate the physical origin of kinematically persistent planes (KPPs) of satellite galaxies in a sample of 190 Milky Way (MW)/M31-like host-satellite systems drawn from the TNG50 simulation. Building on the identification of 46 early…
Impacts of micrometeoroids on the surfaces of Nix and Hydra can produced dust particles and form a ring around Pluto. However, dissipative forces, such as the solar radiation pressure, can lead the particles into collisions in a very short…
In the core accretion paradigm of planet formation, gas giants only form a massive atmosphere after their progenitors exceeded a threshold mass: the critical core mass. Most (exo)planets, being smaller and rock/ice-dominated, never crossed…
We consider the dynamical evolution of small-scale substructure in clusters within two extreme alternate scenarios for their possible origin: 1) the accretion of groups (or small clusters) on quasi-radial orbits, and 2) the merger of…
The discovery of Pluto in 1930 presaged the discoveries of both the Kuiper Belt and ice dwarf planets, which are the third class of planets in our solar system. From the 1970s to the 19990s numerous fascinating attributes of the Pluto…
About two years ago, Wolszczan and Frail announced the detection of a possible planetary system consisting of two Earth-mass planets around a millisecond pulsar. It was pointed out shortly thereafter that the mutual gravitational…
Satellites of giant planets thought to form in gaseous circumplanetary disks (CPDs) during the late planet-formation phase, but it was unknown so far whether smaller mass planets, such as the ice giants could form such disks, thus moons…
In this work we pose the possibility that, at an early stage, the migration of a proto--giant planet caused by the presence of a gaseous circumstellar disk could explain the continuous feeding of small bodies into its orbit. Particularly,…
The solar system's dynamical state can be explained by an orbital instability among the giant planets. A recent model has proposed that the giant planet instability happened during terrestrial planet formation. This scenario has been shown…
Irregular moons are a class of satellite found orbiting all of the Solar System's giant planets: as their orbits don't match those of their planets, they are theorised to have formed elsewhere in the Solar System and were subsequently…
The dominant accretion process leading to the formation of the terrestrial planets of the Solar System is a subject of intense scientific debate. Two radically different scenarios have been proposed. The classic scenario starts from a disk…
The accretion ages of the first planetesimals-the parent bodies of magmatic iron meteorites-suggest they formed within the first 0.5-1 Myr of Solar System history. Yet, planetesimal formation appears to have occurred in at least two…