Related papers: Dynamically correlated minor bodies in the outer S…
Asteroids are leftover pieces from the era of planet formation that help us understand conditions in the early Solar System. Unlike larger planetary bodies that were subject to global thermal modification during and subsequent to their…
Recent analyses have shown that distant orbits within the scattered disk population of the Kuiper belt exhibit an unexpected clustering in their respective arguments of perihelion. While several hypotheses have been put forward to explain…
Motion of a point mass in gravitational fields of the Sun and of the galactic disk is studied. Fundamental features of the motion are found by investigating the time-averaged differential equations for orbital evolution. Several types of…
Collisions are one of the key processes shaping planetary systems. Asteroid families are outcomes of such collisions still identifiable across our solar system. The families provide a unique view of catastrophic disruption phenomena and…
Mean motion resonances play a fundamental role in the dynamics of the small bodies of the Solar System. The last decades of the 20th century gave us a detailed description of the dynamics as well as the process of capture of small bodies in…
Observations with radar, photometric and direct imaging techniques have discovered that multiple asteroid systems can be divided clearly into a handful of different morphologies, and recently, the discovery of small unbound asteroid systems…
The richness of dynamical behavior exhibited by the rotational states of various solar system objects has driven significant advances in the theoretical understanding of their evolutionary histories. An important factor that determines…
Small bodies in the solar system are conventionally classified into asteroids and comets. However, it is recently found that a small number of objects can exhibit properties of both asteroids and comets. Some are more consistent with…
Rings are ubiquitous around giant planets in our Solar System. They evolve jointly with the nearby satellite system. They could form either during the giant planet formation process or much later, as a result of large scale dynamical…
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…
The asteroid belt was dynamically shaped during and after planet formation. Despite representing a broad ring of stable orbits, the belt contains less than one one-thousandth of an Earth mass. The asteroid orbits are dynamically excited…
Context: The discovery of distant trans-Neptunian objects has led to heated discussions about the structure of the outer Solar System. Aims: We study the dynamical evolution of small bodies from the Hill regions of migrating giant gaseous…
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…
All the four giant planets in our Solar System have rings, but their characteristics are very different. The rings consist of a number of small particles, although individual particles have not been directly imaged. Near the central planet,…
Our current knowledge of the dynamical structure of the Kuiper Belt is reviewed here. Numerical results on long term orbital evolution and dynamical mechanisms underlying the transport of objects out of the Kuiper Belt are discussed.…
The outer Solar System contains a large number of small bodies (known as trans-Neptunian objects or TNOs) that exhibit diverse types of dynamical behavior. The classification of bodies in this distant region into dynamical classes --…
Many exo-solar systems discovered in the last decade consist of planets orbiting in resonant configurations and consequently, their evolution should show long-term stability. However, due to the mutual planetary interactions a multi-planet…
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…
Our Solar System includes the Sun, eight major planets and their moons, along with numerous asteroids, comets, and dust particles, collectively known as the small Solar System bodies. Small bodies are relics from the birth of the Solar…
A new classification scheme is introduced for comet-like bodies in the Solar system. It covers the traditional comets as well as the Centaurs and Edgeworth-Kuiper belt objects. At low inclinations, close encounters with planets often result…