Related papers: Rings beyond the giant planets
The search for planets orbiting other stars has recently expanded to include stars from galaxies outside the Milky Way. With the TESS and Gaia surveys, photometric and kinematic information can be combined to identify transiting planet…
Considering effects of tidal plus centrifugal stress acting on icy-rocks and the tensile strength thereof, icy-rocks being in the density range (1-2.4) g cm-3 which had come into existence as collisional ejecta (debris) in the vicinity of…
A handful of stars are known to host both an inner system of multiple transiting planets and an outer giant planet. These systems all feature a prominent gap between the orbits of two of the transiting planets, distinguishing them from…
The D68 ringlet is the innermost feature in Saturn's rings. Four clumps that appeared in D68 around 2014 remained evenly spaced about 30 degrees apart and moved very slowly relative to each other from 2014 up until the last measurements…
We report the discovery of several large "propeller" moons in the outer part of Saturn's A ring, objects large enough to be followed over the 5-year duration of the Cassini mission. These are the first objects ever discovered that can be…
In co-orbital planetary systems, two or more planets share the same orbit around their star. Here we test the dynamical stability of co-orbital rings of planets perturbed by outside forces. We test two setups: i) 'stationary' rings of…
Extrasolar planets abound in almost any possible configuration. However, until five years ago, there was a lack of planets orbiting closer than 0.5 au to giant or subgiant stars. Since then, recent detections have started to populated this…
Images obtained by the Cassini spacecraft of the region just beyond Saturn's main rings reveal a previously unreported narrow and dusty ringlet that has dynamical connections with both Saturn's small satellite Prometheus and the F ring. The…
The recent years have witnessed a carnival of discoveries in the Outer Solar System. Here we provide evidence from numerical simulations of orbital stability to suggest the possible existence of two long lived belts of primordial…
A new model for the shape of the prominent eccentric ringlet in the gap exterior to Saturn's B-ring is developed based on Cassini imaging observations taken over about 8 years. Unlike previous treatments, the new model treats each edge of…
The occurrence of planets in binary star systems has been investigated via a variety of techniques that sample a wide range of semi-major axes, but with a preponderance of such results applicable to planets with semi-major axes less than a…
Brilliantov et al. (PNAS, 2015) propose a model for the size distribution ~R^-3 for small particles with radius R and ~exp(-(R/Rc)^3) for large particles, where Rc=5.5 m. In 1989 Longaretti found analytically ~R^-3 for small particles and…
We know that giant planets played a crucial role in the making of our Solar System. The discovery of giant planets orbiting other stars is a formidable opportunity to learn more about these objects, what is their composition, how various…
The Cassini spacecraft found a new and unique ring that shares the trajectory of Janus and Epimetheus, co-orbital satellites of Saturn. Performing image analysis, we found this to be a continuous ring. Its width is between 30% and 50%…
Some wave features found in the C-ring of Saturn appear to be excited by resonances with normal mode oscillations of the planet. The waves are found at locations in the rings where the ratio of orbital to oscillation frequencies is given by…
Recent observations revealed that several extremely low-density exoplanets show featureless transmission spectra. While atmospheric aerosols are a promising explanation for both the low density and featureless spectra, there is another…
I propose a scenario for the formation of double-ring systems, as observed in some planetary nebulae and in the outer rings of SN 1987A. In this scenario, two jets, one jet on each side of the equatorial plane, expand into a thin, dense…
Our discovery of two new satellites of Pluto, designated S/2005 P 1 and S/2005 P 2 (henceforth, P1 and P2), combined with the constraints on the absence of more distant satellites of Pluto, reveal that Pluto and its moons comprise an…
The Centaur (60558) Echeclus was discovered on March 03, 2000, orbiting between the orbits of Jupiter and Uranus. After exhibiting frequent outbursts, it also received a comet designation, 174P. If the ejected material can be a source of…
Gas giants orbiting interior to the ice line are thought to have been displaced from their formation locations by processes that remain debated. Here we uncover several new metallicity trends, which together may indicate that two competing…