Related papers: Capture of Irregular Satellites at Jupiter
Satellites of giant planets thought to form in gaseous circumplanetary disks (CPDs) during the late planet-formation phase, but it was unknown so far whether smaller mass planets, such as the ice giants could form such disks, thus moons…
Instabilities and strong dynamical interactions between several giant planets have been proposed as a possible explanation for the surprising orbital properties of extrasolar planetary systems. In particular, dynamical instabilities would…
Recent analyses have shown that the concluding stages of giant planet formation are accompanied by the development of large-scale meridional flow of gas inside the planetary Hill sphere. This circulation feeds a circumplanetary disk that…
Detection of Jupiter mass companions to nearby solar type stars with precise radial velocity measurements is now routine, and Doppler surveys are moving towards lower velocity amplitudes. The detection of several Neptune-mass planets with…
The regular satellites found around Neptune ($\approx 17~M_{\Earth}$) and Uranus ($\approx 14.5~M_{\Earth}$) suggest that past gaseous circumplanetary disks may have co-existed with solids around sub-Neptune-mass protoplanets ($<…
A planet orbiting in a disk of planetesimals can experience an instability in which it migrates to smaller orbital radii. Resonant interactions between the planet and planetesimals remove angular momentum from the planetesimals, increasing…
Properties of planetary atmospheres, ionospheres, and magnetospheres are difficult to measure from Earth. Radio occultations are a common method for measuring these properties, but they traditionally rely on radio transmissions from a…
We investigate the prospects for the capture of the proposed Planet 9 from other stars in the Sun's birth cluster. Any capture scenario must satisfy three conditions: the encounter must be more distant than ~150 au to avoid perturbing the…
We present an analysis of X-ray observations of the trans-Jovian planets Saturn, Uranus and Neptune with the ROSAT PSPC in comparison with X-ray observations of Jupiter. For the first time a marginal X-ray detection of Saturn was found and…
Instabilities and strong dynamical interactions between multiple giant planets have been proposed as a possible explanation for the surprising orbital properties of extrasolar planetary systems. In particular, dynamical instabilities seem…
The obliquity of a star, or the angle between its spin axis and the average orbit normal of its companion planets, provides a unique constraint on that system's evolutionary history. Unlike the Solar System, where the Sun's equator is…
The origin of the Jupiter Trojan asteroids has long been a mystery. Dynamically, the population, which is considerably smaller than the main asteroid belt, librates around Jupiter's stable L4 and L5 Lagrange points, 60 deg ahead and behind…
We investigated the formation and evolution of satellite systems in a cold, extended circumplanetary disc around a 10 $M_{\rm{Jupiter}}$ gas giant which was formed by gravitational instability at 50\,AU from its star. The disc parameters…
We carried out observations, with five different instruments ranging in aperture from 0.4m to 10m, of the satellites of Uranus during that planet's 2007 Equinox. Our observations covered specific intervals of time when mutual eclipses and…
The icy satellites around Jupiter are considered to have formed in a circumplanetary disk. While previous models focused on the formation of satellites starting from satellitesimals, the question of how satellitesimals form from smaller…
When extrasolar planets are observed to transit their parent stars, we are granted unprecedented access to their physical properties. It is only for transiting planets that we are permitted direct estimates of the planetary masses and…
The leading theory for the origin of Jupiter Trojans (JTs) assumes that JTs were captured to their orbits near the Lagrangian points of Jupiter during the early reconfiguration of the giant planets. The natural source region for the…
Since 1995, more than 500 exoplanets have been detected using different techniques, of which 11 were detected with gravitational microlensing. Most of these are gravitationally bound to their host stars. There is some evidence of…
Studies from recent years have reached different conclusions regarding how frequently super-Earths are accompanied by long period giant planets and vice versa. This relation has been predicted to be mass dependent by planet formation…
The terrestrial planets are believed to have formed by violent collisions of tens of lunar- to Mars-size protoplanets at time t<200 Myr after the protoplanetary gas disk dispersal (t_0). The solar system giant planets rapidly formed during…