Related papers: Compositions and origins of outer planet systems: …
The requirement that a planet must orbit outside of its Roche limit gives a lower limit on the planet's mean density. The minimum density depends almost entirely on the orbital period and is immune to systematic errors in the stellar…
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…
Centaurs are minor planets orbiting between Jupiter and Neptune that have or had crossing orbits with one or more giant planets. Recent observations and reinterpretation of previous observations have revealed the existence of ring systems…
Rings are complex structures surrounding giant planets and some minor bodies in the Solar System. While some formation mechanisms could also potentially foster their existence around (regular or irregular) satellites, none of these bodies…
Saturn's rings are rock-poor, containing 90%-95% ice by mass. As a group, Saturn's moons interior to and including Tethys are also about 90% ice. Tethys itself contains <6% rock by mass, in contrast to its similar-mass outer neighbor Dione,…
The recent detection of planets around very low mass stars raises the question of the formation, composition and potential habitability of these objects. We use planetary system formation models to infer the properties, in particular their…
Modeling the interior of a planet is difficult because the small number of measured parameters is insufficient to constrain the many variables involved in describing the interior structure and composition. One solution is to invoke…
The gravitational harmonics measured from Juno and Cassini spacecrafts help us to specify the internal structure and chemical elements of Jupiter and Saturn, respectively. However, we still do not know much about the impact of rotation on…
The origin of rings around giant planets remains elusive. Saturn's rings are massive and made of 90-95% of water ice. In contrast, the much less massive rings of Uranus and Neptune are dark and likely to have higher rock fraction. Here we…
Planetary rings are often speculated as being a relatively common attribute of giant planets, partly based on their prevalence within the Solar System. However, their formation and sustainability remain a topic of open discussion, and the…
When a planetary tidal disk -like Saturn's rings- spreads beyond the Roche radius (inside which planetary tides prevent aggregation), satellites form and migrate away. Here, we show that most regular satellites in the solar system probably…
We study the evolution of a protoplanet of a few earth masses embedded in a protoplanetary disc. If we assume that the atmosphere of the protoplanet, i.e. the volume of gas in hydrostatic equilibrium bound to the core, has a surface radius…
The currently available, detailed properties (e.g., isotopic ratios) of solar system planets may provide guides for constructing better approaches of exoplanet characterization. With this motivation, we explore how the measured values of…
Constraining the planetary composition is essential for exoplanetary characterization. In this paper, we use a statistical analysis to determine the characteristic maximum (threshold) radii for various compositions for exoplanets with…
We discuss the nature of rings that may exist around extrasolar planets. Taking the general properties of rings around the gas giants in the Solar System, we infer the likely properties of rings around exoplanets that reside inside the ice…
Several tens of white dwarfs are known to host circumstellar discs of dusty debris, thought to arise from the tidal disruption of rocky bodies originating in the star's remnant planetary system. This paper investigates the evolution of such…
Here it is shown how to find the interior structure of a variety of rock-and-iron planetary bodies by using the rock density and some aspects of the core density as known for the Earth and using a convection principle for the iron-rich…
We study the orbital evolution and mass growth of protoplanets with masses $M \in [0.1-8]$~M$_\oplus$ in the vicinity of a dusty ring, using three-dimensional numerical simulations with a two-fluid model and nested-meshes. We find two…
Many giant exoplanets are found near their Roche limit and in mildly eccentric orbits. In this study we examine the fate of such planets through Roche-lobe overflow as a function of the physical properties of the binary components,…
The bulk composition of an exoplanet is commonly inferred from its average density. For small planets, however, the average density is not unique within the range of compositions. Variations of a number of important planetary…