Related papers: Dynamical capture in the Pluto-Charon system
The terrestrial planets formed by accretion of asteroid-like objects within the inner solar system's protoplanetary disk. Previous works have found that forming a small-mass Mars requires the disk to contain little mass beyond ~1.5 au…
Saturn's mid-sized moons (satellites) have a puzzling orbital configuration with trapping in mean-motion resonances with every other pairs (Mimas-Tethys 4:2 and Enceladus-Dione 2:1). To reproduce their current orbital configuration on the…
The study of our Solar System -- its formation, evolution, and long-term stability -- has been ongoing for centuries and is now a standard part of scientific education. While the formation of other Solar-like exoplanetary systems is…
Mars is likely to be a planetary embryo formed through collisions with planetesimals, which can explain its small mass and rapid formation timescale obtained from 182Hf-182$W chronometry. In the classical theory of planet formation, the…
Recent analyses have shown that the concluding stages of giant planet formation are accompanied by the development of large-scale meridional flow of gas inside the planetary Hill sphere. This circulation feeds a circumplanetary disk that…
Plutinos are Kuiper-belt objects that share the 3:2 Neptune resonance with Pluto. The long-term stability of Plutino orbits depends on their eccentricity. Plutinos with eccentricities close to Pluto (fractional eccentricity difference…
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 investigate the problem of the typical rotation states of the small planetary satellites from the viewpoint of the dynamical stability of their rotation. We show that the majority of the discovered satellites with unknown rotation…
Saturn is the only known planet to have coorbital satellite systems. In the present work we studied the process of mass accretion as a possible mechanism for coorbital satellites formation. The system considered is composed of Saturn, a…
The discovery that the centaur (10199) Chariklo possesses a ring system opens questions about their origin. We here asses the plausibility of different scenarios for the origin of the observed ring system. We first consider the possibility…
We investigated the probability that an inelastic collision of planetesimals within the Hill sphere of the Jovian planets could explain the presence and orbits of observed irregular satellites. Capture of these satellites via this mechanism…
The dynamical features of the irregular satellites of the giant planets argue against an in-situ formation and are strongly suggestive of a capture origin. Since the last detailed investigations of their dynamics, the total number of…
During 2005-2012, images from Hubble Space Telescope (HST) revealed four moons orbiting Pluto-Charon (Weaver et al 2006, Showalter et al 2011, 2012). Although their orbits and geometric shapes are well-known, the 2$\sigma$ uncertainties in…
Recent observations suggest ongoing planet formation in the innermost parsec of the Galactic center (GC). The super-massive black hole (SMBH) might strip planets or planetary embryos from their parent star, bringing them close enough to be…
Kinematically-persistent planes of satellites (KPPs) are fixed sets of satellites co-orbiting around their host galaxy, whose orbital poles are conserved and clustered across long cosmic time intervals. They play the role of 'skeletons',…
It is generally accepted that the four major (Galilean) satellites formed out of the gas disk that accompanied Jupiter's formation. However, understanding the specifics of the formation process is challenging as both small particles…
By logging encounters between planetesimals and planets we compute the distribution of encounters in a numerically integrated two planet system that is migrating due to interactions with an exterior planetesimal belt. Capture of an…
The large scale structure of the Solar System has been shaped by a transient dynamical instability that may have been triggered by the interaction of the giants planets with a massive primordial disk of icy debris. In this work, we…
The icy satellites around Jupiter are considered to have formed in a circumplanetary disk. While previous models focused on the formation of satellites starting from satellitesimals, the question of how satellitesimals form from smaller…
We present simulations of Triton's post-capture orbit that confirm the importance of Kozai-type oscillations in its orbital elements. In the context of the tidal orbital evolution model, these variations require average pericenter distances…