Related papers: Empirical Limits on the Russell Conjecture

Near-rectilinear halo orbits (NRHOs) around Earth-Moon L2 in the Circular Restricted 3-Body Problem (CR3BP) exhibit a complex dynamical landscape, featuring a band of normally elliptic orbits embedded within regions of strong instability.…

According to the cold dark matter scenario, a large number of dark subhalos should be located within the halo of each Milky-way sized galaxy. One promising possibility for detecting such subhalos is to try to observe their gravitational…

We set new limits on the mass of the Milky Way, making use of the latest kinematic information for Galactic satellites and halo objects. In order to bind these sample objects to the Galaxy, their rest-frame velocities must be lower than…

Dark matter haloes and subhaloes that host no luminous counterpart are predicted within our current understanding of galaxy formation within a $\Lambda$CDM paradigm. Observational tests, such as gravitational lensing, have made potential…

We examine isothermal dark matter halos in hydrostatic equilibrium with a cosmological constant Lambda =Omega_\Lambda rho_{crit}c^2, where Omega_\Lambda=0.7, and rho_{crit} is the present value of the critical density with h=0.65. The…

Models are developed to simulate lightcurves of stars dimmed by transiting exoplanets with and without rings. These models are then applied to \textit{Kepler} photometry to search for planetary rings in a sample of 21 exoplanets, mostly hot…

There are hints of a novel object ("Planet 9") with a mass $5-10$ $M_\oplus$ in the outer Solar System, at a distance of order 500 AU. If it is a relatively conventional planet, it can be found in telescopic searches. Alternatively, it has…

We propose a unified version of hoop conjecture valid for various black holes and horizonless compact stars. This conjecture is expressed by the mass to circumference ratio $4\pi M_{in}/C\leqslant 1$, where C is the circumference of the…

The recent discovery of an earth-like planet around Proxima Centauri has drawn much attention to this star and its environment. We performed a series of observations of Proxima Centauri using SPHERE, the planet finder instrument installed…

Structure on sub-galactic scales provides important tests of galaxy formation models and the nature of dark matter. However, such objects are typically too faint to provide robust mass constraints. Here, we report the discovery of an…

The Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor mission is a NASA observatory designed to discover and characterize near-Earth asteroids and comets. The mission's primary objective is to find the majority of objects large enough to cause severe…

At low redshift, only about one-tenth of the known baryons lie in galaxies or the hot gas seen in galaxy clusters and groups. Models posit that these "missing baryons" are in gaseous form in overdense filaments that connect the much denser…

M dwarf systems offer an opportunity to study terrestrial exoplanetary atmospheres due to their small size and cool temperatures. However, the extreme conditions imposed by these host stars raise question about whether their close-in rocky…

The HI Parkes Zone of Avoidance Survey is a 21 cm blind search with the multibeam receiver on the 64-m radiotelescope, looking for galaxies hidden behind the southern Milky Way. The first, shallow (15 mJy rms) phase of the survey has…

The recent observations of microlensing events in the LMC by the MACHO and EROS collaborations suggest that an important fraction of the galactic halo is in the form of Massive Halo Objects (MHO) of about 0.1 M_{\odot}. Here, we argue that…

I review the results obtained using the GHRS on low redshift Lyman alpha absorbers. Until the advent of HST and the GHRS, the existence of such absorbers was doubted. The confirmation of their existence, in one of the first GHRS GTO team…

We report measured spectral properties for more than 1000 NEOs, representing>5% of the currently discovered population. Thermal flux detected below 2.5 {\mu}m allows us to make albedo estimates for nearly 50 objects, including two comets.…

We explore the lowest mass limit that can be placed on the halo mass function in CDM using 28 strong gravitational lenses. For this purpose, we study an extreme model in which the halo mass function and mass-concentration relation follow…

Previous work has demonstrated orbital stability for 100 Myr of initially near-circular and coplanar small bodies in a region termed the 'Earth-Mars belt' from 1.08 au $< a <$ 1.28 au. Via numerical integration of 3000 particles, we studied…

I show that a dedicated space telescope with a meter-size aperture can detect numerous interstellar objects, 10-m in diameter, that pass within ~20 degrees from the Sun. Separating the emitted thermal radiation from the reflection of…