Related papers: Capture of Irregular Satellites at Jupiter
The shape of the two gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, is determined primarily by their rotation rate, and interior density distribution. It is also affected by their zonal winds, causing an anomaly of O(10 km) at low latitudes. However,…
The origin of hot Jupiters -- gas giant exoplanets orbiting very close to their host stars -- is a long-standing puzzle. Planet formation theories suggest that such planets are unlikely to have formed in-situ but instead may have formed at…
Future surveys for transiting extrasolar planets, including the space-based mission Kepler (Borucki et al 2003), are expected to detect hundreds of Jovian mass planets and tens of terrestrial mass planets. For many of these newly discovered…
Large scale simulations of Centaurs have yielded vast amounts of data, the analysis of which allows interesting but uncommon scenarios to be studied. One such rare phenomenon is the temporary capture of Centaurs as Trojans of the giant…
(Abridged) Planets are surrounded by fractal surfaces (traditionally called Hill spheres), separating the inner zones of long-term stable orbital motion of their satellites from the outer space where the gravitational pull from the Sun…
Despite decades of inquiry, the origin of giant planets residing within a few tenths of an astronomical unit from their host stars remains unclear. Traditionally, these objects are thought to have formed further out before subsequently…
To understand the frequency, and thus the formation and evolution, of planetary systems like our own solar system, it is critical to detect Jupiter-like planets in Jupiter-like orbits. For long-term radial-velocity monitoring, it is useful…
Models of the dynamical evolution of the early solar system following the dispersal of the gaseous protoplanetary disk have been widely successful in reconstructing the current orbital configuration of the giant planets. Statistically, some…
A significant fraction of hot Jupiters have orbital axes misaligned with their host stars' spin axes. The large stellar obliquities of these giants have long been considered potential signatures of high-eccentricity migration, which is…
Despite the discovery of thousands of exoplanets in recent years, the number of known exoplanets in star clusters remains tiny. This may be a consequence of close stellar encounters perturbing the dynamical evolution of planetary systems in…
We report relations between inner ($<1$ au) super Earths (planets with mass/radius between Earth and Neptune) and outer ($>1$ au) giant planets (mass $>0.3~M_{\rm J}$, or cold Jupiters) around Sun-like stars, based on data from both…
Disks of bodies orbiting a much more massive central object are extremely common in astrophysics. When the orbits comprising such disks are eccentric, we show they are susceptible to a new dynamical instability. Gravitational forces between…
Many warm Jupiters (WJs) have substantial eccentricities, which are linked to their formation and migration histories. This paper explores eccentricity excitation of WJs due to planet-planet scattering, beginning with 3-4 planets in…
The formation of the solar system's giant planets predated the ultimate epoch of massive impacts that concluded the process of terrestrial planet formation. Following their formation, the giant planets' orbits evolved through an episode of…
The exquisite photometric precision of the Kepler space telescope now puts the detection of extrasolar moons at the horizon. Here, we firstly review observational and analytical techniques that have recently been proposed to find exomoons.…
The presence of ``Hot Jupiters'', Jovian mass planets with very short orbital periods orbiting nearby main sequence stars, has been proposed to be primarily due to the orbital migration of planets formed in orbits initially much further…
We apply the MEGNO (Mean Exponential Growth of Nearby Orbits) technique to the dynamics of Jovian irregular satellites. We demonstrate the efficiency of applying the MEGNO indicator to generate a mapping of relevant phase-space regions…
The weather layers of the gas giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn, comprise the shallow atmospheric layers that are influenced energetically by a combination of incoming solar radiation and localised latent heating of condensates, as well as…
Recent simulations show that giant planets of about one Jupiter mass migrate inward at a rate that differs from the Type II prediction. Here we show that at higher masses, planets migrate outward. Our result differs from previous ones…
The discovery of high incidence of hot Jupiters in dense clusters challenges the field-based hot Jupiter formation theory. In dense clusters, interactions between planetary systems and flyby stars are relatively common. This has a…