Related papers: Models of Saturn's Interior Constructed with Accel…
The transiting "hot Saturn" HD 149026b, which has the highest mean density of any confirmed planet in the Neptune-Jupiter mass range, has challenged theories of planet formation since its discovery in 2005. Previous investigations could not…
The determination of Saturn's atmospheric noble gas abundances are critical to understanding the formation and evolution of Saturn, and giant planets in general. These measurements can only be performed with an entry probe. A Saturn probe…
One of the biggest successes of the Cassini mission is the detection of small moons (moonlets) embedded in Saturn's rings which cause S-shaped density structures in their close vicinity, called propellers (Spahn and Sremcevic 2000;…
In early Solar System numerical simulations, where chaos is a primary driver, it is difficult to explore parameter space in a systematic way. In such simulations, stable configurations are hard to come by, and often require special…
During the late stage of planet formation when Mars-size cores appear, interactions among planetary cores can excite their orbital eccentricities, speed their merges and thus sculpture the final architecture of planet systems. This series…
This work uses density functional molecular dynamics simulations of fluid helium at high pressure to examine how shock wave experiments with precompressed samples can help characterizing the interior of giant planets. In particular, we…
Recent high precision meteoritic data infers that Mars finished its accretion rapidly within 10 Myr of the beginning of the Solar system and had an accretion zone that did not entirely overlap with the Earth's. Here we present a detailed…
We present numerically-derived orbits and mass estimates for the inner Saturnian satellites, Atlas, Prometheus, Pandora, Janus and Epimetheus from a fit to 2580 new Cassini ISS astrometric observations spanning February 2004 to August 2013.…
Saturn formed beyond the snow line in the primordial solar nebula that made it possible for it to accrete a large mass. Disk instability and core accretion models have been proposed for Saturn's formation, but core accretion is favored on…
Recent observations have indicated a strong connection between compact ($a \lesssim 0.5$ au) super-Earth and mini-Neptune systems and their outer ($a \gtrsim$ a few au) giant planet companions. We study the dynamical evolution of such inner…
The high precision of the latest version of the planetary ephemeris EPM2011 enables one to explore more accurately a variety of small effects in the solar system. The processing of about 678 thousand of position observations of planets and…
The mass and distribution of metals in the interiors of exoplanets are essential for constraining their formation and evolution processes. Nevertheless, with only masses and radii measured, the determination of exoplanet interior structures…
We phenomenologically put local constraints on the rotation of distant masses by using the planets of the solar system. First, we analytically compute the orbital secular precessions induced on the motion of a test particle about a massive…
(abridged) We report the results of a 10-year timing campaign on PSR J1738+0333, a 5.85-ms pulsar in a low-eccentricity 8.5-hour orbit with a low-mass white dwarf companion (...) The measurements of proper motion and parallax allow for a…
The internal rotation of post-main sequence stars is investigated, in response to the convective pumping of angular momentum toward the stellar core, combined with a tight magnetic coupling between core and envelope. The spin evolution is…
Planetary formation models predict the existence of massive terrestrial planets and experiments are now being designed that should succeed in discovering them and measuring their masses and radii. We calculate internal structures of planets…
Giant planet formation process is still not completely understood. The current most accepted paradigm, the core instability model, explains several observed properties of the solar system's giant planets but, to date, has faced difficulties…
Planetary rings sustain a continual bombardment of hypervelocity meteoroids that erode the surfaces of ring particles on time scales of 10^5 - 10^7 years. The debris ejected from such impacts re-accretes on to the ring, though often at a…
We analyze several thousand Cassini ISS images in order to study the inner edge of the Keeler gap in Saturn's outer A ring. We find strong evidence for an m=32 perturbation with a mean amplitude of radial variation of 4.5 km. Phase analysis…
The observed disparity between the radial dependence of the ion and electron densities measured by the Cassini plasma and radio science instruments are used to show that the region between the outer edge of Saturn's main rings and its…