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Understanding the diverse formation and migration pathways that shape exoplanetary systems requires characterizing both their atmospheric properties and their orbital dynamics. A key dynamical diagnostic is the projected spin-orbit angle -…
Evidence in the Solar System suggests that the giant planets underwent an epoch of radial migration that was very rapid, with an e-folding timescale shorter than 1~Myr. It is probable that the cause of this migration was that the giant…
We significantly constrain the sky position, distance, and mass of a possible additional, distant planet in the solar system by examining its influence on the distance between Earth and the Cassini Spacecraft. Our preferred region is…
Debates regarding the age and inclination of the planetary system orbiting HR 8799, and the release of additional astrometric data following the discovery of the fourth planet prompted us to examine the possibility of constraining these two…
Co-orbital bodies are the byproduct of planet formation and evolution, as we know from the Solar System. Although planet-size co-orbitals do not exists in our planetary system, dynamical studies show that they can remain stable for long…
In a recent paper we proposed that the giant planets' primordial orbits may have been eccentric (~0.05), and used a suite of dynamical simulations to show outcomes of the giant planet instability that are consistent with their present-day…
Observations in the past decade have revealed extrasolar planets with a wide range of orbital semimajor axes and eccentricities. Based on the present understanding of planet formation via core accretion and oligarchic growth, we expect that…
Continued observational characterization of transiting planets that reside in close proximity to their host stars has shown that a substantial fraction of such objects posses orbits that are inclined with respect to the spin axes of their…
Wide-orbit exoplanets are starting to be detected, and planetary formation models are under development to understand their properties. We propose a population of "Oort" planets around other stars, forming by a mechanism analogous to how…
Recent imaging campaigns indicate the likely existence of massive planets (~ 1-10 MJ) on ~1000 year orbits about a few percent of stars. Such objects are not easily explained in most current planet formation models. In this Letter we use…
The two dominant features in the distribution of orbital parameters for close-in exoplanets are the prevalence of circular orbits for very short periods, and the observation that planets on closer orbits tend to be heavier. The first…
We have detected a 12 M$_{\rm Jup}$ planet orbiting in or near the habitable zone of a main-sequence A star via the pulsational phase shifts induced by orbital motion. The planet has an orbital period of $840\pm20$ d and an eccentricity of…
We report the discovery of a dwarf planet candidate, 2017 OF201, currently located at a distance of 90 au. Its orbit is extremely wide and extends to the inner Oort cloud, with a semi-major axis of 830 au and a perihelion of 45 au,…
Previous work has demonstrated orbital stability for 100 Myr of initially near-circular and coplanar small bodies in a region termed the 'Earth-Mars belt' from 1.08 au $< a <$ 1.28 au. Via numerical integration of 3000 particles, we studied…
Using a fully autonomous spacecraft - Bering - we propose to detect and study sub-km asteroids from an orbit within the asteroid Main Belt. The main purpose of the proposed Bering mission is to detect a statistically significant sample of…
Most major planetary bodies in the solar system rotate in the same direction as their orbital motion: their spin is prograde. Theoretical studies to explain the direction as well as the magnitude of the spin vector have had mixed success.…
Disks of bodies orbiting a much more massive central object are extremely common in astrophysics. When the orbits comprising such disks are eccentric, we show they are susceptible to a new dynamical instability. Gravitational forces between…
In the past decade, numerical simulations started to reveal the possible existence of planet 9 in our solar system. The planet 9 scenario can provide an excellent explanation to the clustering in orbital elements for Kuiper Belt objects.…
Recent analyses of Kepler space telescope data reveal that transiting planets with orbital periods shorter than about 2-3 days are generally observed around late-type stars with rotation periods longer than about 5-10 days. We investigate…
We consider the high eccentricity, 0.66, of the newly discovered planet around 16 Cyg B, using the fact that the parent star is part of a wide binary. We show that the high eccentricity of the planet could be the result of tidal forces…