Related papers: Turning up the heat on `Oumuamua
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…
The paper discusses a model of the bombardment of the Earth and the Moon by small bodies when these planets were formed. It is shown that the total ice mass delivered with the bodies to the Earth from the feeding zone of the giant planets…
Without extensive maintenance, Dyson spheres inevitably disintegrate by asteroid impacts over billions of years. The resulting fragments would appear as anomalous interstellar objects, potentially sharing the unusual shape and motion of…
The architecture of exoplanetary systems is often different from the solar system, with some exoplanets being in close orbits around their host stars and having orbital periods of only a few days. In analogy to interactions between stars in…
Continuous habitability of a planet is a critical condition for advanced forms of life to appear, but it can be endangered by astronomical events such as stellar encounters. The purpose of this study is to analyze close stellar encounters…
The first interstellar objects, 1I/`Oumuamua, 2I/Borisov and 3I/ATLAS, were discovered over the past decade. We follow the trajectories of known interstellar objects in the gravitational potential of the Milky Way galaxy to constrain their…
When extrasolar planets are observed to transit their parent stars, we are granted unprecedented access to their physical properties. It is only for transiting planets that we are permitted direct estimates of the planetary masses and…
We study the effects of an encounter between a wandering cosmic object (WCO) of 0.1 solar mass and some Kuiperian Objects (KO). First, we let the WCO cross the out-skirt of ou Kuiper belt. Such encounters can produce two types of solar…
We propose that collisions between neutron stars and interstellar asteroids, such as `Oumuamua, could power observable radio flares in the Milky Way galaxy. We find the rate of such events at $\sim 1 \mathrm{\; Jy}$ to be $\sim 10…
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…
Centaurs are objects whose orbits are found between those of the giant planets. They are supposed to originate mainly from the TransNeptunian objects, and they are among the sources of NearEarth Objects.TransNeptunian Objects (TNOs) cross…
The current properties of small bodies provide important clues to their origin and history. However, how much small bodies were processed by past collisions and to what extent they retain a record of processes that took place during the…
In this thesis, I explore two topics in exoplanet science. The first is the prevalence of Earth-size planets in the Milky Way Galaxy. To determine the occurrence of planets having different sizes, orbital periods, and other properties, I…
When we are fortunate enough to view an exoplanetary system nearly edge-on, the star and planet periodically eclipse each other. Observations of eclipses (transits and occultations) provide a bonanza of information that cannot be obtained…
1I/'Oumuamua was discovered by the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS 1) on 19 October 2017. Unlike all previously discovered minor planets this object was determined to have eccentricity $e > 1.0$, suggesting…
By telescopic tracking, we have established that the orbit of the trans-neptunian object (2000 CR$_{105}$) has a perihelion of $\simeq$44 AU, and is thus outside the domain controlled by strong gravitational close encounters with Neptune.…
Motivated by recent visits from interstellar comets, along with continuing discoveries of minor bodies in orbit of the Sun, this paper studies the capture of objects on initially hyperbolic orbits by our solar system. Using an ensemble of…
We present observations of the interstellar interloper 1I/2017 U1 ('Oumuamua) taken during its 2017 October flyby of Earth. The optical colors B-V = 0.70$\pm$0.06, V-R = 0.45$\pm$0.05, overlap those of the D-type Jovian Trojan asteroids and…
The detections of 1I/Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov within just two years demonstrate impressively that interstellar objects (ISOs) must be common in the Milky Way. Once released from their parent system, these ISOs travel for Gyr through…
Asteroid 1I/'Oumuamua is the first observed interstellar object. Its light-curve amplitude indicates that the object is highly elongated with an axis ratio of at least 5:1. The absence of such elongated asteroids in the Solar system, as…