Related papers: The Planets in Indigenous Australian Traditions
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…
Due to their extremely small luminosity compared to the stars they orbit, planets outside our own Solar System are extraordinarily difficult to detect directly in optical light. Careful photometric monitoring of distant stars, however, can…
Magnetic interactions between a planet and its environment are known to lead to aurorae and shocks in the solar system. The large number of close-in exoplanets that have been discovered so far triggered a renewed interest in understanding…
A detailed understanding of the physics of star and planet formation requires study of individual objects as well as statistical assessment of global properties and evolutionary trends. Observational investigations of circumstellar material…
We point out an intriguing relation between the masses of the transiting planets and their orbital periods. For the six currently known transiting planets, the data are consistent with a decreasing linear relation. The other known…
Moderately close binaries are a special class of targets for planet searches. From a theoretical standpoint, their hospitality to giant planets is uncertain and debated. From an observational standpoint, many of these systems present…
The search for extrasolar Earth-like planets is underway. Over 100 extrasolar giant planets are known to orbit nearby sun-like stars, including several in multiple-planet systems. These planetary systems are stepping stones for the search…
Roughly half of Solar-type planet hosts have stellar companions, so understanding how these binary companions affect the formation and evolution of planets is an important component to understanding planetary systems overall. Measuring the…
The zodiacal light is a night-glow mostly visible along the plane of the ecliptic. It represents the background radiation associated with solar light scattered by the tenuous flattened interplanetary cloud of dust particles surrounding the…
This article relates two topics of central importance in modern astronomy - the discovery some fifteen years ago of the first planets around other stars (exoplanets), and the centuries-old problem of understanding the origin of our own…
Most observed extrasolar planets have masses similar to, but orbits very different from, the gas giants of our solar system. Many are much closer to their parent stars than would have been expected and their orbits are often rather…
The vast majority of known extrasolar planets orbit stars with a narrow range of masses (0.7-1.3 M_sun). Recent years have seen rapid growth in our knowledge about the properties of planetary systems with host stars significantly more…
The last two decades have seen the number of known exoplanets increase from a small handful to nearly 2000 known exoplanets, thousands more planet candidates, and several upcoming missions that are expected to further increase the…
The similarity of Mercury to the Moon raises the question on mercurian analogues of lunar transient phenomena. However, since the mid-1960s, this topic has remained out of attention. Nevertheless, the discoveries of the 21st century and the…
Our understanding of the processes that are relevant to the formation and maintenance of habitable planetary systems is advancing at a rapid pace, both from observation and theory. The present review focuses on recent research that bears on…
[Abridged] In the late nineteenth century, Mars emerged as one of the most intensively reported astronomical objects in the popular press, driven by favourable oppositions, improved telescopic capabilities and growing speculation regarding…
The night sky played an important role in the social structure, oral traditions, and cosmology of the Arrernte and Luritja Aboriginal cultures of Central Australia. A component of this cosmology relates to meteors, meteorites, and impact…
From wispy gas giants on the verge of disruption to tiny rocky bodies already falling apart, short-period exoplanets pose a severe puzzle to theories of planet formation and orbital evolution. By far most of the planets known beyond the…
Reconstructions of the paleoclimate indicate that ancient climatic fluctuations on Earth are often correlated with variations in its orbital elements. However, the chaos inherent in the solar system's orbital evolution prevents numerical…
The possible discovery of astronomical effects due to precession - such as the shift in the declination of heliacal raising of bright stars or the precession of the equinoxes - is reviewed for various ancient cultures in the world. Although…