Related papers: Habitability in Different Milky Way Stellar Enviro…
Thousands of confirmed and candidate exoplanets have been identified in recent years. Consequently, theoretical research on the formation and dynamical evolution of planetary systems has seen a boost, and the processes of planet-planet…
Most stars form in compact, dense embedded clusters with memberships ranging from a dozen stars to many millions of stars. Embedded clusters containing more than a few hundred stars also contain O stars that disrupt the nebula abruptly.…
The formation of galaxies can be understood in terms of the assembly patterns of each type of galactic component. To perform this kind of analysis, is necessary to define some criteria to separate those components. Decomposition methods…
Only star clusters that are sufficiently compact and massive survive largely unharmed beyond 10 Myr. However, their compactness means a high stellar density which can lead to strong gravitational interactions between the stars. As young…
Stars which pass close to the Sun can perturb the Oort cloud, injecting comets into the inner solar system where they may collide with the Earth. Using van Leeuwen's re-reduction of the Hipparcos data complemented by the original Hipparcos…
OB stars generally form in open clusters within the Milky Way's thin disk, so when they are found at high Galactic latitudes, it is thought that they were ejected from their birth clusters during the past few tens of millions of years.…
The external destruction of protoplanetary discs in a clustered environment acts mainly due to two mechanisms: gravitational drag by stellar encounters and evaporation by strong stellar winds and radiation. If encounters play a role in disc…
Recent knowledge of Galactic dynamics suggests that stars radially move on the disk when they encounter transient spiral arms that are naturally generated during the process of disk formation. We argue that a large movement of the solar…
After their initial formation, disk galaxies are observed to be rotationally stable over periods of >6 Gyr, implying that any large velocity disturbances of stars and gas clouds are damped rapidly on the timescale of their rotation.…
Habitable zones are regions around stars where large bodies of liquid water can be sustained on a planet or satellite. As many stars form in binary systems with non-zero eccentricity, the habitable zones around the component stars of the…
At least 10-15% of nearby sun-like stars have known Jupiter-mass planets. In contrast, very few planets are found in mature open and globular clusters such as the Hyades and 47 Tuc. We explore here the possibility that this dichotomy is due…
Aims. Investigate the influence of cluster environments on asteroids, with special attention towards captured material. Methods. Using numerical methods, a sub-virial fractally distributed star-forming region and a virialised Plummer…
Most stars form in a cluster environment. These stars are initially surrounded by discs from which potentially planetary systems form. Of all cluster environments starburst clusters are probably the most hostile for planetary systems in our…
We study numerical simulations of satellite galaxy disruption in a potential resembling that of the Milky Way. Our goal is to assess whether a merger origin for the stellar halo would leave observable fossil structure in the phase-space…
During their main sequence lifetimes, the majority of all Galactic Disc field stars must endure at least one stellar intruder passing within a few hundred AU. Mounting observations of planet-star separations near or beyond this distance…
We investigate how the dynamical state of molecular clouds relates to host galaxy environment, and how this impacts the star formation efficiency in the Milky Way and seven nearby galaxies. We compile measurements of molecular cloud and…
This paper studies the dynamical evolution of young stellar clusters with $N$ = 100 - 1000 members. We use N-body simulations to explore how evolution depends on system size $N$ and the initial conditions. Motivated by recent observations…
Since 1950 when Oort published his paper on the structure of the cloud of comets it is believed that stars passing near this hypothetical cometary reservoir play an important role in the dynamical evolution of long period comets and…
The Oort Cloud remains one of the most poorly explored regions of the Solar System. We propose that its properties can be constrained by studying a population of dust grains produced in collisions of comets in the outer Solar System. We…
Centers of galaxies host both a supermassive black hole and a dense stellar cluster. Such an environment should lead to stellar collisions, possibly at very high velocities so that the total energy involved is of the same order as…