Related papers: Rings beyond the giant planets
The discovery of planets around massive stars is important for understanding how planet formation and evolution is conditioned by different stellar environments. However, current planetary search surveys have failed to detect planets around…
Prior to the 1990s, speculations about the occurrence of planets around other stars were based only on planet formation theory, observations of circumstellar disks, and the knowledge that at least one seemingly ordinary star had managed to…
Over the course of the past two decades, observational surveys have unveiled the intricate orbital structure of the Kuiper Belt, a field of icy bodies orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune. In addition to a host of readily-predictable orbital…
The detection of exoplanets through direct imaging has produced numerous new positive identifications in recent years. The technique is biased towards planets at wide separations due to the difficulty in removing the stellar signature at…
We predict how a remote observer would see the brightness variations of giant planets similar to Jupiter and Saturn as they orbit their central stars. We model the geometry of Jupiter, Saturn and Saturn's rings for varying orbital and…
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…
After the discovery of rings around the largest known Centaur object, (10199) Chariklo, we carried out observation campaigns of stellar occultations produced by the second-largest known Centaur object, (2060) Chiron, to better characterize…
The very recent discovery of planets orbiting very low mass stars sheds light on these exotic objects. Planetary systems around low-mass stars and brown dwarfs are very different from our solar system: the planets are expected to be much…
Circumbinary planets are generally more likely to transit than equivalent single-star planets, but practically the geometry and orbital dynamics of circumbinary planets make the chance of observing a transit inherently time-dependent. In…
Complex structures, including sharp edges, rings and gaps, have been commonly observed in protoplanetary disks with or without planetary candidates. Here we consider the possibility that they are the intrinsic consequences of angular…
The discovery of planets around PSR~1257+12 suggests that planetary systems may be detected around the recycled pulsars found in globular clusters. Planetary systems in dense clusters have lifetimes to disruption due to perturbations by…
Uranus and Saturn share similarities in terms of their atmospheric composition, which is primarily made up of hydrogen and helium, as well as their ring systems. Uranus has 13 known rings, which are divided into narrow main rings, dusty…
The narrow main rings of Uranus are composed of almost exclusively centimeter- to meter-sized particles, with a very small or nonexistent dust component; however, the filling factor, composition, thickness, mass, and detailed particle size…
Recent studies of stellar occultations observed by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) onboard the Cassini spacecraft have demonstrated that multiple spiral wave structures in Saturn's rings are probably generated by…
Super-Earths, objects slightly larger than Earth and slightly smaller than Uranus, have found a special place in exoplanetary science. As a new class of planetary bodies, these objects have challenged models of planet formation at both ends…
We report observations of stripe-like features in Enceladus' plumes captured simultaneously by Cassini's VIMS-IR and ISS NAC instruments during flyby E17, with similar patterns seen in VIMS-IR data from flyby E13 and E19. These parallel…
In principle, the combined measurements of the mass and radius a giant exoplanet allow one to determine the relative fraction of hydrogen and helium and of heavy elements in the planet. However, uncertainties on the underlying physics imply…
We recommend an intensive effort to survey and understand the obliquity distribution of small close-in extrasolar planets over the coming decade. The orbital obliquities of exoplanets--i.e., the relative orientation between the planetary…
We announce the discovery of a planetary system with 7 transiting planets around a Kepler target, a current record for transiting systems. Planets b, c, e and f are reported for the first time in this work. Planets d, g and h were…
The discovery of Pluto in 1930 presaged the discoveries of both the Kuiper Belt and ice dwarf planets, which are the third class of planets in our solar system. From the 1970s to the 19990s numerous fascinating attributes of the Pluto…