Related papers: Do Centaurs preserve their source inclinations?
Recent advances have enabled the discovery of a population of potentially Earth-like planets, yet their orbital eccentricity, which governs their climate and provides clues about their origin and dynamical history, is still largely…
Much of the dynamical structure of the Kuiper belt can be explained if Neptune migrated over several AU, and/or if Neptune was scattered to an eccentric orbit during planetary instability. An outstanding problem with the existing formation…
We study dwarf galaxies in the Centaurus A group to investigate their metallicity and possible environmental effects. The Centaurus A group (at ~4 Mpc from the Milky Way) contains about 50 known dwarf companions of different morphologies…
Short-period super-Earths and mini-Neptunes encircle more than $\sim50\%$ of Sun-like stars and are relatively amenable to direct observational characterization. Despite this, environments in which these planets accrete are difficult to…
The Kuiper belt includes tens of thousands of large bodies and millions of smaller objects. The main part of the belt objects is located in the annular zone between 39.4 au and 47.8 au from the Sun, the boundaries correspond to the average…
In 2014, the discovery of two well-defined rings around the Centaur (10199) Chariklo were announced. This was the first time that such structures were found around a small body. In 2015, it was proposed that the Centaur (2060) Chiron may…
We report the detection of a planet whose orbit surrounds a pair of low-mass stars. Data from the Kepler spacecraft reveal transits of the planet across both stars, in addition to the mutual eclipses of the stars, giving precise constraints…
While cooler giant planets are often observed with non-zero eccentricities, the short-period circular orbits of hot Jupiters suggest that they lose orbital energy and angular momentum due to tidal interactions with their host stars.…
Proxima Centauri is our nearest stellar neighbor and one of the most well-studied stars in the sky. In 2016, a planetary companion was detected through radial velocity measurements. Proxima Centauri b has a minimum mass of 1.3 Earth masses…
The scattering trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) can be measured to smaller sizes than any other distant small-body population. We use the largest sample yet obtained, 68 discoveries, primarily by the Outer Solar System Origins Survey (OSSOS),…
The cold main classical Kuiper Belt consists of those non-resonant small solar system bodies with low orbital inclinations and orbital semi-major axes between 42.4 and 47.7 au. These objects likely formed \textit{in situ} and the population…
We study the resolved stellar populations of dwarf galaxies in the nearby Centaurus A/M83 group of galaxies. Our goal is to characterize their evolutionary history and to investigate eventual similarities or differences with the dwarf…
The discovery that many trans-neptunian objects exist in pairs, or binaries, is proving invaluable for shedding light on the formation, evolution and structure of the outer Solar system. Based on recent systematic searches it has been…
The Dwarf Planet Ceres revealed the presence of ammonia and other unique properties compared to other asteroids in the main belt which suggests that it was not formed in situ. We model the early dynamical evolution of the outer Solar System…
The two dominant features in the distribution of orbital parameters for close-in exoplanets are the prevalence of circular orbits for very short periods, and the observation that planets on closer orbits tend to be heavier. The first…
Over the course of the past two decades, observational surveys have unveiled the intricate orbital structure of the Kuiper Belt, a field of icy bodies orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune. In addition to a host of readily-predictable orbital…
The relaxed distribution of stars around a massive black hole is known to follow a cusp profile $\rho(r)\propto r^{-\alpha}$ with characteristic slope $\alpha=7/4$. This follows from energy conservation and a scattering rate as given by two…
Planet formation occurs around a wide range of stellar masses and stellar system architectures. An improved understanding of the formation process can be achieved by studying it across the full parameter space, particularly toward the…
Previous analyses of Doppler and Kepler data have found that Sun-like stars hosting "cold Jupiters" (giant planets with $a\gtrsim 1\,\mathrm{AU}$) almost always host "inner super-Earths" (1-$4\,R_\oplus$, $a\lesssim1\,\mathrm{AU}$). Here,…
Context. Centaurs go around the Sun between the orbits of Jupiter and Neptune. Only a fraction of the known centaurs have been found to display comet-like features. Comet 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1 is the most remarkable active centaur. It…