Related papers: Prospects for unseen planets beyond Neptune
Recent observations (Burnes2002,Veillet2002,Margot2002a) have revealed an unexpectedly high binary fraction among the Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) that populate the Kuiper Belt. The TNO binaries are strikingly different from asteroid…
Chiang et al. 2006, hereafter C06 have recently proposed that the observed structure of the Kuiper belt could be the result of a dynamical instability of a system of ~5 primordial ice giant planets in the outer Solar System. According to…
The binary star system gamma Cephei is unusual in that it harbours a stable giant planet around the larger star at a distance only about a tenth of that of the stellar separation. Numerical simulations are carried out into the stability of…
The six-degree obliquity of the sun suggests that either an asymmetry was present in the solar system's formation environment, or an external torque has misaligned the angular momentum vectors of the sun and the planets. However, the exact…
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…
It is a well-known fact that the presence of a massive perturber interacting with a population of minor bodies following very eccentric orbits can strongly affect the distribution of their nodal distances. The details of this process have…
We study the gravitational effects of two celestrial bodies on a typical object of the Kuyper Belt. The first body is a kuyperian object itself with fairly large eccentricity and perihelion but with a large mass, about 16 times the mass of…
There are now many known exoplanets with Msin(i) within a factor of two of Neptune's, including the transiting planets GJ436b and HAT-P-11b. Planets in this mass-range are different from their more massive cousins in several ways that are…
In the Solar system the planets' compositions vary with orbital distance, with rocky planets in close orbits and lower-density gas giants in wider orbits. The detection of close-in giant planets around other stars was the first clue that…
This paper reviews coagulation models for planet formation in the Kuiper Belt, emphasizing links to recent observations of our and other solar systems. At heliocentric distances of 35-50 AU, single annulus and multiannulus planetesimal…
Understanding the formation and dynamical evolution of habitable planets in extrasolar planetary systems is a challenging task. In this respect, systems with multiple giant planets and/or multiple stars present special complications. The…
Until about a decade ago, ring systems were only known to exist around giant planets. Each one of the four giant planets harbours its own distinctive and unique system of rings and inner satellites. The past decade has been marked by the…
The orbital evolution and stability of planetary systems with interaction from the belts is studied using the standard phase-plane analysis. In addition to the fixed point which corresponds to the Keplerian orbit, there are other fixed…
A few studies have reported a significant dearth of exoplanets with Neptune mass and radius with orbital periods below $2$--$4$ d. This cannot be explained by observational biases because many Neptunian planets with longer orbital periods…
The search for habitable planets like Earth around other stars fulfils an ancient imperative to understand our origins and place in the cosmos. The past decade has seen the discovery of hundreds of planets, but nearly all are gas giants…
The Kuiper belt is a population of icy bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. A particularly puzzling and up-to-now unexplained feature of the Kuiper belt is the so-called `kernel', a concentration of orbits with semimajor axes a~44 AU,…
Among exoplanets, the small-size population constitutes the dominant one, with a diversity of properties and compositions ranging from rocky to gas dominated envelope. While a large fraction of them have masses and radii similar to or…
Stellar occultations provide a powerful tool to explore objects of the outer solar system. The Gaia mission now provides milli-arcsec accuracy on the predictions of these events and makes possible observations that were previously…
Trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) with diameter greater than 100 km currently moving in not too eccentric orbits could be formed directly by the contraction of large rarefied condensations. Along with the gravitational influence of planets,…
With more than 15 years since the the first radial velocity discovery of a planet orbiting a Sun-like star, the time baseline for radial velocity surveys is now extending out beyond the orbit of Jupiter analogs. The sensitivity to exoplanet…