Related papers: An orbital window into the ancient Sun's mass
A long-term numerical integration of the classical Newtonian approximation to the planetary orbital motions of the full Solar System (sun + 8 planets), spanning 20 Gyr, was performed. The results showed no severe instability arising over…
The sub-Saturn ($\sim$4--8$R_{\oplus}$) occurrence rate rises with orbital period out to at least $\sim$300 days. In this work we adopt and test the hypothesis that the decrease in their occurrence towards the star is a result of…
In the past years, a systematic downward revision of the metallicity of the Sun has led to the "solar modeling problem", namely the disagreement between predictions of standard solar models and inferences from helioseismology. Recent solar…
A surprisingly large amount of information on our solar system can be gained from simple measurements of the apparent angular diameters of the sun and the moon. This information includes the average density of the sun, the distance between…
Mass is constantly being recycled in the universe. One of the most powerful recycling paths is via stellar mass-loss. All stars exhibit mass loss with rates ranging from ~10(-14) to 10(-4) M(sun) yr-1, depending on spectral type, luminosity…
The estimate of the change rate of the solar gravitational parameter $\mathrm{d}(GM_{\odot})/\mathrm{d}t$ is obtained from processing modern positional observations of planets and spacecraft. Observations were processed and parameters were…
With the availability of considerably more data, we revisit the question of how special our Solar System is, compared to observed exoplanetary systems. To this goal, we employ a mathematical transformation that allows for a meaningful,…
If the origin of life and the evolution of observers on a planet is favoured by atypical properties of a planet's host star, we would expect our Sun to be atypical with respect to such properties. The Sun has been described by previous…
Magnetic activity of the Sun and other stars causes their brightness to vary. We investigate how typical the Sun's variability is compared to other solar-like stars, i.e. those with near-solar effective temperatures and rotation periods. By…
Multi-wavelength studies of solar analogs (G0-5 V stars) with ages from ~50 Myr to 9 Gyr have been carried out as part of the "Sun in Time" program for nearly 20 yrs. From these studies it is inferred that the young (ZAMS) Sun was rotating…
Advances in understanding of the white light faculae measured at the Royal Greenwich Observatory from 1874 to 1976 suggest that they offer a more direct measure of solar brightening by small diameter photospheric magnetic flux tubes than do…
Highly-differential spectroscopic studies have revealed that the Sun is deficient in refractory elements relative to solar twins. To investigate the role of giant planets on this signature, we present a high precision abundance analysis of…
The solar system started to form about 4.56 Gyr ago and despite the long intervening time span, there still exist several clues about its formation. The three major sources for this information are meteorites, the present solar system…
The Sun is the main energy source to Earth, and understanding its variability is of direct relevance to climate studies. Measurements of total solar irradiance exist since 1978, but this is too short compared to climate-relevant time…
We present new evidence for a problem with cooling rates predicted by substellar evolutionary models that implies model-derived masses in the literature for brown dwarfs and directly imaged planets may be too high. Based on our dynamical…
Exoplanets are organized in a broad array of orbital configurations that reflect their formation along with billions of years of dynamical processing through gravitational interactions. This history is encoded in the angular momentum…
Although the discovery of the chaotic motion of the inner planets in the solar system dates back to more than thirty years ago, the secular chaos of their orbits still dares more analytical analyses. Apart from the high-dimensional…
The rate at which the solar wind extracts angular momentum from the Sun has been predicted by theoretical models for many decades, and yet we lack a conclusive measurement from in-situ observations. In this letter we present a new estimate…
The last solar minimum was, by recent standards, unusually deep and long. We are now close to the maximum of the subsequent solar cycle, which is relatively weak. In this article we make comparisons between different global (unresolved)…
The long-term variations in the orbit of the Earth govern the insolation on its surface and hence its climate. The use of the astronomical signal, whose imprint has been recovered in the geological records, has revolutionized the…