Related papers: Observational Constraints on Planet Nine: Cassini …
We consider the observational effects of a deficit angle, w, in the topology of the solar system and in the 'double pulsar' system PSR J0737-3039A/B. Using observations of the perihelion precession of Mercury, and the gravitational…
Significant advances in the discovery and characterization of the planetary systems of nearby stars can be accomplished with a moderate aperture high performance coronagraphic space mission that could be started in the next decade. Its…
Planet 9 is an hypothetical object in the outer Solar system, which is as yet undiscovered. It has been speculated that it may be a terrestrial planet or gas/ice giant, or perhaps even a primordial black hole (or dark matter condensate).…
Motivated by the report of a possible new planetary member of the Solar System, this work calculates cross sections for interactions between passing stars and this proposed Planet Nine. Evidence for the new planet is provided by the orbital…
The Einstein rings and proper motions of nearby stars tend to be large. Thus, every year some foreground stars within a few hundred parsecs of Earth induce gravitational lensing events in background stars. In some of these cases, the events…
In addition to cosmological tests based on the mass function and clustering of galaxy clusters, which probe the growth of cosmic structure, nature offers two independent ways of using clusters to measure cosmic distances. The first uses…
This paper explores the fundamental causal limits on how much of the universe we can observe or affect. It distinguishes four principal regions: the affectable universe, the observable universe, the eventually observable universe, and the…
We search for signatures of planets in 43 intensively monitored microlensing events that were observed between 1995 and 1999. Planets would be expected to cause a short duration (~1 day) deviation on the smooth, symmetric light curve…
As the NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) fulfills its primary mission it is executing an unprecedented all-sky survey with the potential to discover distant planets in our own solar system, as well as hundreds of…
We compare potential state-of-the-art experiments for detecting Earth-mass planets around main-sequence stars using radial velocities, transits, astrometry, and microlensing. For conventionally-discussed signal-to-noise ratio (S/N)…
Observing habitable exoplanets that may resemble Earth is a key priority in astronomy that is dependent on not only detecting such worlds, but also ascertaining that apparent signatures of habitability are not due to other sources. Space…
As the NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) fulfills its primary mission, it is executing an unprecedented survey of almost the entire sky: TESS's approved extended mission will likely extend sky coverage to ~94%, including…
The observed disparity between the radial dependence of the ion and electron densities measured by the Cassini plasma and radio science instruments are used to show that the region between the outer edge of Saturn's main rings and its…
SPICES (Spectro-Polarimetric Imaging and Characterization of Exoplanetary Systems) is a five-year M-class mission proposed to ESA Cosmic Vision. Its purpose is to image and characterize long-period extrasolar planets and circumstellar disks…
We present a combined analysis of all publicly available, visible HST observations of transits of the planet HD 209458b. We derive the times of transit, planet radius, inclination, period, and ephemeris. The transit times are then used to…
We investigate the observational constraints on the oscillating scalar field model using data from type Ia supernovae, cosmic microwave background anisotropies, and baryon acoustic oscillations. According to a Fourier analysis, the galaxy…
It is shown how repeated observations of the sunset from various points up a tall building can be used to determine the Earth's radius. The same observations can also be used, at some latitudes, to deduce an approximate value for the amount…
We present the discovery of a planet on a very wide orbit in the microlensing event OGLE-2012-BLG-0838. The signal of the planet is well separated from the main peak of the event and the planet-star projected separation is found to be twice…
Gravitational microlensing is currently the only technique that helps study the Galactic distribution of planets as a function of distance from the Galactic center. The Galactic location of a lens system can be uniquely determined only when…
Planet 9 was proposed as an explanation for the clustering of orbits for some trans-Neuptunian objects. Recently, the use of a sub-relativistic spacecraft was proposed to indirectly probe Planet 9's gravitational influence. Here we study…