Related papers: Finding Planet Nine: a Monte Carlo approach
A hypothetical gravitating body in the outer Solar System, the so-called Planet Nine, was proposed to explain the unexpected clustering of the Kuiper Belt Objects. As it has not been observed via telescopes, it was conjectured to be a…
(Abridged) The trajectory of Saturn is nowadays known at essentially the same accuracy level of the inner planets due to the telemetry of the Cassini spacecraft. Thus, the expected perturbations $\dot\varpi,~\dot\Omega$ due to PX, for which…
We have been conducting a survey for distant solar system objects beyond the Kuiper Belt edge (~50 AU) with new wide-field cameras on the Subaru 8 meter and CTIO 4 meter telescopes. We are interested in the orbits of objects that are…
The potential existence of a distant planet ("Planet Nine") in the Solar system has prompted a re-think about the evolution of planetary systems. As the Sun transitions from a main sequence star into a white dwarf, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus…
The accumulating, but small, set of large semi-major axis trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) shows an apparent clustering in the orientations of their orbits. This clustering must either be representative of the intrinsic distribution of these…
Recent observational surveys of the outer Solar System provide evidence that Neptune's distant $n$:1 mean-motion resonances may harbor relatively large reservoirs of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). In particular, the discovery of two…
There are hints of a novel object ("Planet 9") with a mass $5-10$ $M_\oplus$ in the outer Solar System, at a distance of order 500 AU. If it is a relatively conventional planet, it can be found in telescopic searches. Alternatively, it has…
With its planet detection efficiency reaching a maximum for orbital radii between 1 and 10 AU, microlensing provides a unique sensitivity to planetary systems similar to our own around galactic and even extragalactic stars acting as lenses…
Context: Planets outside our solar system transiting their host star, i. e. those with an orbital inclination near 90 degree, are of special interest to derive physical properties of extrasolar planets. With the knowledge of the host star's…
It is a well-known fact that the presence of a massive perturber interacting with a population of minor bodies following very eccentric orbits can strongly affect the distribution of their nodal distances. The details of this process have…
The final orbital configuration of a planetary system is shaped by both its early star-disk environment and late-stage gravitational interactions. Assessing the relative importance of each of these factors is not straightforward due to the…
We present results from a new pipeline custom-designed to search for faint, undiscovered solar system bodies using full-frame image data from the NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission. This pipeline removes the baseline…
We evaluate the effects of a distant planet, commonly known as planet 9, on the dynamics of the giant planets of the Solar System. We find that, given the large distance of planet 9, the dynamics of the inner giant planets can be decomposed…
The growing rate of increase in the number of the discovered extra-solar planets which has consequently raised the enthusiasm to explore the universe in hope of finding earth-like planets has resulted in the wide use of Gravitational…
The observational census of trans-Neptunian objects with semi-major axes greater than ~250 AU exhibits unexpected orbital structure that is most readily attributed to gravitational perturbations induced by a yet-undetected, massive planet.…
Microlensing is a proven extrasolar planet search method that has already yielded the detection of four exoplanets. These detections have changed our understanding of planet formation ``beyond the snowline'' by demonstrating that…
A number of intriguing patterns have been identified in the distributions of the orbital elements of the known extreme trans-Neptunian objects or ETNOs --those with semimajor axis greater than 150 au and perihelion distance greater than 30…
We provide a preliminary estimate of the performance of reflex astrometry on Earth-like planets in the habitable zones of nearby stars. In Monte Carlo experiments, we analyze large samples of astrometric data sets with low to moderate…
Doppler spectroscopy has detected 136 planets around nearby stars. A major puzzle is why their orbits are highly eccentric, while all planets in our Solar System are on nearly circular orbits, as expected if they formed by accretion…
Due to their extremely small luminosity compared to the stars they orbit, planets outside our own Solar System are extraordinarily difficult to detect directly in optical light. Careful photometric monitoring of distant stars, however, can…