Related papers: Tectonic Activity on Pluto After the Charon-Formin…
We present results from a multi-chord Pluto stellar occultation observed on 29 June 2015 from New Zealand and Australia. This occurred only two weeks before the NASA New Horizons flyby of the Pluto system and serves as a useful comparison…
We introduce our new code, SMERCURY-T, which is based on existing codes SMERCURY (Lissauer et al. 2012) and Mercury-T (Bolmont et al. 2015). The result is a mixed-variable symplectic N-body integrator that can compute the orbital and spin…
New Horizons observations suggest that CH4 on Pluto has a complex history, involving reservoirs of different composition, thickness and stability controlled by volatile processes occurring on different timescales. In order to interpret…
Combining stellar occultation observations probing Pluto's atmosphere from 1988 to 2013 and models of energy balance between Pluto's surface and atmosphere, we conclude that Pluto's atmosphere does not collapse at any point in its 248-year…
The distribution of eccentricities e of extra-solar planets with semi-major axes a > 0.2 AU is very uniform, and values for e are generally large. For a < 0.2 AU, eccentricities are much smaller (most e < 0.2), a characteristic widely…
Computed using the APPLE planetary evolution code, we present updated evolutionary models for Jupiter and Saturn that incorporate helium rain, non-adiabatic thermal structures, and "fuzzy" extended heavy-element cores. Building on our…
The arrival of powerful instruments will provide valuable data for the characterization of rocky exoplanets. It is then crucial to accurately model the dynamical state of exoplanets. Rocky planets with sufficiently large orbits should have…
Astrophysical fluid bodies that orbit close to one another induce tidal distortions and flows that are subject to dissipative processes. The spin and orbital motions undergo a coupled evolution over astronomical timescales, which is…
We perform numerical simulations to investigate tidal evolution of two single-planet systems, that is, WASP-50 and GJ 1214 and a two-planet system CoRoT-7. The results of orbital evolution show that tidal decay and circularization may play…
We study the impactor flux and cratering on Pluto and Charon due to the collisional evolution of Plutinos. Plutinos are those trans-Neptunian objects located at 39.5 AU, in the 3:2 mean motion resonance with Neptune. To do this, we develop…
Since twenty years, a large population of close-in planets orbiting various classes of low-mass stars (from M to A-type stars) has been discovered. In such systems, the dissipation of the kinetic energy of tidal flows in the host star may…
Unveiling the fate of ultra-short period (USP) planets may help us understand the qualitative agreement between tidal theory and the observed exoplanet distribution. Nevertheless, due to the time-varying interchange of spin-orbit angular…
This paper explores the possibility that the progenitors of the small satellites of Pluto got captured in the Pluto-Charon system from the massive heliocentric planetesimal disk in which Pluto was originally embedded into. We find that, if…
Evolution of binary objects under the influence of tides drastically affects the expected observational properties of the system. With the discovery of a large number of close-in hot Jupiter systems and eclipsing binaries from missions such…
We analyze two multi-chord stellar occultations by Pluto observed on July 18th, 2012 and May 4th, 2013, and monitored respectively from five and six sites. They provide a total of fifteen light-curves, twelve of them being used for a…
With seven planets, the TRAPPIST-1 system has the largest number of exoplanets discovered in a single system so far. The system is of astrobiological interest, because three of its planets orbit in the habitable zone of the ultracool M…
Recent studies have shown that ocean dynamics can have a significant warming effect on the permanent night sides of 1 to 1 tidally locked terrestrial exoplanets with Earth-like atmospheres and oceans in the middle of the habitable zone.…
The impact of the inner structure and thermal history of planets on their observable features, such as luminosity or magnetic field, crucially depends on the poorly known heat and charge transport properties of their internal layers. The…
Strong tidal interaction with the central star can circularize the orbits of close-in planets. With the standard tidal quality factor Q of our solar system, estimated circularization times for close-in extrasolar planets are typically…
The stability of a rotating flow in a triaxial ellipsoidal shell with an imposed temperature difference between inner and outer boundaries is studied numerically. We demonstrate that (i) a stable temperature field encourages the tidal…