Related papers: Solar Obliquity Induced by Planet Nine
The apparent regularity of the motion of the giant planets of our solar system suggested for decades that said planets formed onto orbits similar to the current ones and that nothing dramatic ever happened during their lifetime. The…
The Sun is not quite a perfect sphere, and its oblateness, thought to be induced through its rotation, has been measured using optical observations of its radius. Its gravitational quadrupole moment can then be deduced using solar models,…
Most known trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) gravitationally scattering off the giant planets have orbital inclinations consistent with an origin from the classical Kuiper belt, but a small fraction of these "scattering TNOs" have inclinations…
We investigate the formation of icy super-Earth mass planets within a gravitationally unstable ring of solids orbiting at 250-750 AU around a 1 solar mass star. Coagulation calculations demonstrate that a system of a few large oligarchs and…
The Planet Nine hypothesis encompasses a body of about 5-8 Earth's masses whose orbital plane would be inclined to the ecliptic by one or two tens of degrees and whose perihelion distance would be as large as about 240-385 astronomical…
Planetary science beyond the boundaries of our Solar System is today in its infancy. Until a couple of decades ago, the detailed investigation of the planetary properties was restricted to objects orbiting inside the Kuiper Belt. Today, we…
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…
The dynamical structure of the Solar System can be explained by a period of orbital instability experienced by the giant planets. While a late instability was originally proposed to explain the Late Heavy Bombardment, recent work favors an…
Several properties of the Solar System, including the wide radial spacing of the giant planets, can be explained if planets radially migrated by exchanging orbital energy and momentum with outer disk planetesimals. Neptune's…
The orbits of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) can indicate the existence of an undiscovered planet in the outer solar system. Here, we used N-body computer simulations to investigate the effects of a hypothetical Kuiper Belt planet (KBP) on…
The stellar obliquity of a transiting planetary system can be constrained by combining measurements of the star's rotation period, radius, and projected rotational velocity. Here we present a hierarchical Bayesian technique for recovering…
We significantly constrain the sky position, distance, and mass of a possible additional, distant planet in the solar system by examining its influence on the distance between Earth and the Cassini Spacecraft. Our preferred region is…
A giant impact origin for the Moon is generally accepted, but many aspects of lunar formation remain poorly understood and debated. \'Cuk et al. (2016) proposed that an impact that left the Earth-Moon system with high obliquity and angular…
The triple asteroids and triple Kuiper belt objects (collectively called the triple minor planets) in the Solar system are of particular interest to the scientific community since the discovery of the first triple asteroid system in 2004.…
All four giant planets in the Solar system possess irregular satellites, characterized by large, highly eccentric and/or inclined orbits that are distinct from the nearly circular, uninclined orbits of the regular satellites. This…
The distribution of stellar obliquities provides critical insight into the formation and evolution pathways of exoplanets. In the past decade, it was found that hot stars hosting hot Jupiters are more likely to have high obliquities than…
A simple dynamical model is employed to study the possible orbital evolution of scattered planets and phase plane analysis is used to classify the parameter space and solutions. Our results reconfirm that there is always an increase in…
The known population of exoplanets exhibits a much wider range of orbital eccentricities than Solar System planets and has a much higher average eccentricity. These facts have been widely interpreted to indicate that the Solar System is an…
The spin-rotation of a planet arises from the accretion of angular momentum during its formation, but the details of this process are still unclear. In the solar system, the equatorial rotation velocities and spin angular momentum of the…
We aim to determine the relative angle between the total angular momentum of the minor planets and that of the Sun-planets system, and to improve the orientation of the invariable plane of the solar system. By utilizing physical parameters…