Related papers: Solar System Moons as Analogs for Compact Exoplane…
The modestly eccentric and non-coplanar orbits of the giant planets pose a challenge to solar system formation theories which generally indicate that the giant planets emerged from the protoplanetary disk in nearly perfectly circular and…
The Kepler mission has allowed the detection of numerous multi-planet exosystems where the planetary orbits are relatively compact. The first such system detected was Kepler-11 which has six known planets at the present time. These kinds of…
One of the primary surprises of exoplanet detections has been the discovery of compact planetary systems, whereby numerous planets reside within ~0.5 AU of the host star. Many of these kinds of systems have been discovered in recent years,…
The diversity and quantity of moons in the Solar System suggest a manifold population of natural satellites exist around extrasolar planets. Of peculiar interest from an astrobiological perspective, the number of sizable moons in the…
Approximately half of the planets discovered by NASA's Kepler mission are in systems where just a single planet transits its host star, and the remaining planets are observed to be in multi-planet systems. Recent analyses have reported a…
Small planets, 1-4x the size of Earth, are extremely common around Sun-like stars, and surprisingly so, as they are missing in our solar system. Recent detections have yielded enough information about this class of exoplanets to begin…
NASA's Kepler mission identified over 4000 extrasolar planets that transit (cross in front of) their host stars. This sample has revealed detailed features in the demographics of planet sizes and orbital spacings. However, knowledge of…
The orbit eccentricities of the Solar System planets are unusually low compared to the average of known exoplanetary systems. A power law correlation has previously been found between the multiplicity of a planetary system and the orbital…
The rich diversity of multi-planetary systems and their architectures is greatly contrasted by the uniformity exhibited within many of these systems. Previous studies have shown that compact Kepler systems tend to exhibit a peas-in-a-pod…
Many exoplanets have been found in orbits close to their host stars and thus they are subject to the effects of photo-evaporation. Previous studies have shown that a large portion of exoplanets detected by the Kepler mission have been…
With the discovery of now more than 500 exoplanets, we present a statistical analysis of the planetary orbital periods and their relationship to the rotation periods of their parent stars. We test whether the structure of planetary orbits,…
The nearly circular (mean eccentricity <e>~0.06) and coplanar (mean mutual inclination <i>~3 deg) orbits of the Solar System planets motivated Kant and Laplace to put forth the hypothesis that planets are formed in disks, which has…
Extrasolar planets that pass in front of their host star (transit) cause a temporary decrease in the apparent brightness of the star once per orbit, providing a direct measure of the planet's size and orbital period. In some systems with…
The apparent regularity of the motion of the giant planets of our solar system suggested for decades that said planets formed onto orbits similar to the current ones and that nothing dramatic ever happened during their lifetime. The…
We recommend an intensive effort to survey and understand the obliquity distribution of small close-in extrasolar planets over the coming decade. The orbital obliquities of exoplanets--i.e., the relative orientation between the planetary…
Despite years of high accuracy observations, none of the available theoretical techniques has yet allowed the confirmation of a moon beyond the solar system. Methods are currently limited to masses about an order of magnitude higher than…
Most observed extrasolar planets have masses similar to, but orbits very different from, the gas giants of our solar system. Many are much closer to their parent stars than would have been expected and their orbits are often rather…
We have established precise planet radii, semimajor axes, incident stellar fluxes, and stellar masses for 909 planets in 355 multi-planet systems discovered by Kepler. In this sample, we find that planets within a single multi-planet system…
Observations of exoplanetary systems provide clues about the intrinsic distribution of planetary systems, their architectures, and how they formed. We develop a forward modelling framework for generating populations of planetary systems and…
Since the discovery of the first extra-solar planets, we are confronted with the puzzling diversity of planetary systems. Processes like planet radial migration in gas-disks and planetary orbital instabilities, often invoked to explain the…