Related papers: Binary Survival in the Outer Solar System
With the discovery of Kuiper Belt binaries that have wide separations and roughly equal masses new theories were proposed to explain their formation. Two formation scenarios were suggested by Goldreich and collaborators: In the first,…
We investigate the origin and stability of extrasolar satellites orbiting close-in gas giants, focusing on whether these satellites can survive planetary migration within a protoplanetary disk. To address this question, we used Posidonius,…
Most stars form in dense stellar environments, where frequent close encounters can strongly perturb and reshape the early architecture of planetary systems. The solar system, with its rich population of distant comets, provides a natural…
We propose an ecliptic Deep Drilling Field that will discover some 10,000~small and faint Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) --- primitive rocky/icy bodies that orbit at the outside of our Solar System and uniquely record the processes of planetary…
With more than 260 extrasolar planetary systems discovered to-date, the search for habitable planets has found new grounds. Unlike our solar system, the stars of many of these planets are hosts to eccentric or close-in giant bodies. Several…
We combine the results from several multiplicity surveys of pre-main-sequence stars located in four nearby star-forming regions with Spitzer data from three different Legacy Projects. This allows us to construct a sample of 349 targets,…
The existence of planets orbiting a central binary star system immediately raises questions regarding their formation and dynamical evolution. Recent discoveries of circumbinary planets by the Kepler space telescope has shown that some of…
Recent studies of solar system formation suggest that the solar system's giant planets formed and migrated in the protoplanetary disk to reach resonant orbits with all planets inside 15 AU from the Sun. After the gas disk's dispersal,…
Many recent observational studies have concluded that planetary systems commonly exist in multiple-star systems. At least ~20%, and presumably a larger fraction of the known extrasolar planetary systems are associated with one or more…
Transiting circumbinary planets discovered by Kepler provide unique insight into binary star and planet formation. Several features of this new found population, for example the apparent pile-up of planets near the innermost stable orbit,…
Dynamical studies suggest that most of the circumbinary discs (CBDs) should be coplanar. However, under certain initial conditions, the CBD can evolve toward polar orientation. Here we extend the parametric study of polar configurations…
We compile a sample of 341 binary and multiple star systems with the aim of searching for and characterising Kuiper belt-like debris discs. The sample is assembled by combining several smaller samples studied in previously published work…
The locations of the fully despun, double synchronous end states of tidal evolution are derived for spherical components. With the exception of nearly equal-mass binaries, binary asteroid systems are in the midst of lengthy tidal…
Some short-period, detached binary systems have recently been reported to experience very rapid orbital decay, much faster than is expected from the angular-momentum loss caused by gravitational radiation alone. As these systems contain…
The flyby of Pluto and Charon by the New Horizons spacecraft provided high-resolution images of cratered surfaces embedded in the Kuiper belt, an extensive region of bodies orbiting beyond Neptune. Impact craters on Pluto and Charon were…
Following its flyby and first imaging the Pluto-Charon binary, the New Horizons spacecraft visited the Kuiper-Belt-Object (KBO) (486958) 2014 MU69 (Arrokoth). Imaging showed MU69 to be a contact-binary, made of two individual lobes…
Tight and compact binary systems, such as double neutron star binaries, are believed to undergo a common envelope evolution phase, resulting in strongly bound orbits. During this phase, the outer layers of the primary star are expelled,…
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,…
Planets have been observed in tight binary systems with separations less than 20 AU. A likely formation scenario for such systems involves a dynamical capture, after which high relative inclinations are likely and may lead to Kozai…
Studying the relative orientations of the orbits of exoplanets and wide-orbiting binary companions (semimajor axis greater than 100 AU) can shed light on how planets form and evolve in binary systems. Previous observations by multiple…