Related papers: Dynamical capture in the Pluto-Charon system

Moons tidally interact with their host planets and stars. A close moon is quickly synchronised by the planet, or becomes captured in a higher spin-orbit resonance. However, the planet requires much more time to significantly alter its…

The dynamical structure of the Solar System can be explained by a period of orbital instability experienced by the giant planets. While a late instability was originally proposed to explain the Late Heavy Bombardment, recent work favors an…

Satellites around large asteroids are preferentially found among those with the most rapid rotation and elongated shape. The taxonomic statistics are similarly skewed; in total, 13 asteroids larger than 100 km are known to have satellites,…

Chariklo is the only small Solar system body confirmed to have rings. Given the instability of its orbit, the presence of rings is surprising, and their origin remains poorly understood. In this work, we study the dynamical history of the…

(Abridged) The orbits of the recently discovered satellites of Pluto, S/2005 P2 and S/2005 P1, are significantly non-Keplerian, even if P2 and P1 have negligible masses, because the mass ratio of Charon-Pluto is ~0.1. We present an analytic…

It is believed that satellites of giant planets form in circumplanetary disks. Many of the previous contributions assumed that their formation process proceeds similarly to rocky planet formation, via accretion of the satellite seeds,…

We investigate the conditions under which the regular satellites of Jupiter and Saturn formed. The final stage of giant planet accretion is thought to occur slowly over a relatively long, 10 Myr, timescale. Gas accretion during this stage,…

An instability among the giant planets' orbits can match many aspects of the Solar System's current orbital architecture. We explore the possibility that this dynamical instability was triggered by the close passage of a star or substellar…

A significant fraction of Milky Way (MW) satellites exhibit phase-space properties consistent with a coherent orbital plane. Using tailored N--body simulations of a spherical MW halo that recently captured a massive (1.8$\times…

Circumplanetary particle disks would be created in the late stage of planetary formation either by impacts of planetary bodies or disruption of satellites or passing bodies, and satellites can be formed by accretion of disk particles…

We describe comprehensive calculations of the formation of icy planets and debris disks at 30-150 AU around 1-3 solar mass stars. Disks composed of large, strong planetesimals produce more massive planets than disks composed of small, weak…

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has revealed the complex geology of Pluto and Charon. Pluto's encounter hemisphere shows ongoing surface geological activity centered on a vast basin containing a thick layer of volatile ices that appears to…

Several stars show deep transits consistent with discs of roughly 1 Solar radius seen at moderate inclinations, likely surrounding planets on eccentric orbits. We show that this configuration arises naturally as a result of planet-planet…

Pluto's two small satellites, temporarily designated S/2005 P 1 and S/2005 P 2, were observed on four dates (15.1 and 18.1 May 2005, 15.7 February 2006, and 2.8 March 2006) using the Hubble Space Telescope's (HST) Advanced Camera for…

Planet formation begins with collisional growth of small planetesimals accumulating into larger ones. Such growth occurs while planetesimals are embedded in a gaseous protoplanetary disc. However, small-planetesimals experience collisions…

Planetary satellites are an integral part of the heirarchy of planetary systems. Here we make two predictions concerning their formation. First, primordial satellites, which have an array of distinguishing characteristics, form only around…

Considering effects of tidal plus centrifugal stress acting on icy-rocks and the tensile strength thereof, icy-rocks being in the density range (1-2.4) g cm-3 which had come into existence as collisional ejecta (debris) in the vicinity of…

Formation models in which terrestrial bodies grow via the pairwise accretion of planetesimals have been reasonably successful at reproducing the general properties of the solar system, including small body populations. However, planetesimal…

Of the four giant planets in the Solar system, only Jupiter and Neptune are currently known to possess swarms of Trojan asteroids - small objects that experience a 1:1 mean motion resonance with their host planet. In Lykawka et al. (2009),…

Long-term evolution of a stellar orbit captured by a massive galactic center via successive interactions with an accretion disc has been examined. An analytical solution describing evolution of the stellar orbital parameters during the…