Related papers: Galactic planetary science
Whereas the Solar System has Mars and Europa as the best candidates for finding fossil/extant life as we know it - based on complex carbon compounds and liquid water - the 263 (non-pulsar) planetary systems around other stars as known at 15…
Binary stars are ubiquitous; the majority of solar-type stars exist in binaries. Exoplanet occurrence rate is suppressed in binaries, but some multiples do still host planets. Binaries cause observational biases in planet parameters, with…
Since the mid 70ies it is known that the dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way are arranged in a thin, polar structure. The arrangement and motion within this structure has been identified as a severe challenge to the standard model of…
The fields of occultation and microlensing are linked historically. Early this century, occultation of the Sun by the Moon allowed the apparent positions of background stars projected near the limb of the Sun to be measured and compared…
With the availability of considerably more data, we revisit the question of how special our Solar System is, compared to observed exoplanetary systems. To this goal, we employ a mathematical transformation that allows for a meaningful,…
By the 2040s, the exoplanet field will have moved from the discovery of a few thousand planets to hundreds of thousands, thanks to Gaia DR5, TESS, PLATO, Roman, and their successors. At that stage, the key bottleneck will no longer be…
We analyze the properties of searches devoted to finding planetary transits by observing simple stellar systems, such as globular clusters, open clusters, and the Galactic bulge. We develop the analytic tools necessary to predict the number…
The stellar astronomy has always been considered the fundamental source of knowledge about the basic building blocks of the universe - the stars. It has proved correctness of many physical theories - like e.g. the idea of nuclear fusion in…
It is plausible that most of the Stars in the Milky Way (MW) Galaxy, like the Sun, consist of planetary systems, instead of a single planet. Out of the estimately discovered 3,950 planet-hosting stars, about 860 of them are known to be…
This paper is devoted to exploring how we can discover and study nearby (< 1-2 kpc) planetary and binary systems by observing their action as gravitational lenses. Lensing can extend the realm of nearby binaries and planets that can be…
Our understanding of planet formation has been rapidly evolving in recent years. The classical planet formation theory, developed when the only known planetary system was our own Solar System, has been revised to account for the observed…
Planetary rings are the only nearby astrophysical disks, and the only disks that have been investigated by spacecraft. Although there are significant differences between rings and other disks, chiefly the large planet/ring mass ratio that…
We discuss recent observations of stars located close to the symmetry plane of the Milky Way, and examine them in the context of theories of Galaxy formation and evolution. The kinematics, ages, and compositions of thin disk stars in the…
With the discovery of galaxies that existed when the universe was very young (approximately 5 percent of its current age), of planets not in our own solar system, and with the tantalizing evidence that the conditions for life may have…
Earth is the only planet known to harbor life and, as a result, the search for habitable and inhabited planets beyond the Solar System commonly focuses on analogs to our planet. However, Earth's atmosphere and surface environment have…
Studying our Galaxy, the Milky Way (MW), gives us a close-up view of the interplay between cosmology, dark matter, and galaxy formation. In the next decade our understanding of the MW's dynamics, stellar populations, and structure will…
We review the evolution of our understanding of the planetary nebulae phenomenon and their place in the scheme of stellar evolution. The historical steps leading to our current understanding of central star evolution and nebular formation…
The early gas-dust solar nebula is considered: the gasdynamic theory is used to study the gravitational Jeans-type instability in its protoplanetary disk. The implications for the origin of the solar system are discussed. It is shown that a…
Most mechanisms proposed for the formation of planets are modified versions of the mechanism proposed for the solar system. Here we argue that, in terms of those planetary systems which have been observed, the case for the solar system…
Circumbinary planets (CBPs) are planets that orbit around both stars of a binary system. This chapter traces the history of research on CBPs and provides an overview over the current knowledge about CBPs and their detection methods. After…