Related papers: The Wide-Binary Origin of The Pluto-Charon System
The Pluto-Charon system is a binary system, characterised by its high mass ratio and its tidally locked synchronous orbit. Surrounding the central binary, four satellites - Styx, Nix, Kerberos and Hydra - follow near-circular and near…
We used N-body simulations to model the 4.5 Gyr orbital evolution of the early Kuiper Belt, incorporating a massive protoplanetary disk, the four giant planets, and 1500 primordial Pluto-class bodies ("Plutos") that drove Neptune's grainy…
Binaries have played a crucial role many times in the history of modern astronomy and are doing so again in the rapidly evolving exploration of the Kuiper Belt. The large fraction of transneptunian objects that are binary or multiple, 48…
Understanding the origin of planets that have formed in binary stars is fundamental to constrain theories of binary and planet formation. The planet occurrence rate in binaries with a separation $\lesssim 50$ AU is only $\sim$ one third…
Over the past few decades, numerous wide (>1000 au) binaries in the Galactic field and halo have been discovered. Their existence cannot be explained by the process of star formation or by dynamical interactions in the field, and their…
The majority of the discovered transiting circumbinary planets are located very near the innermost stable orbits permitted, raising questions about the origins of planets in such perturbed environments. Most favored formation scenarios…
Our discovery of two new satellites of Pluto, designated S/2005 P 1 and S/2005 P 2 (henceforth, P1 and P2), combined with the constraints on the absence of more distant satellites of Pluto, reveal that Pluto and its moons comprise an…
The Classical Kuiper Belt is populated by a group of objects with low inclination orbits, reddish colors and usually belonging to a binary system. This so called Cold Classical Kuiper Belt is considered to have been formed in situ from…
The Pluto-Charon system, likely formed from an impact, has reached the endpoint of its tidal evolution. During its evolution into the dual-synchronous state, the equilibrium tidal figures of Pluto and Charon would have also evolved as…
Existence of subsurface oceans on the satellites of the giant planets and Trans-Neptunian objects has been predicted for some time. Oceans on icy worlds exert a considerable influence on the dynamics of the ice-ocean system and, because of…
The Capture Theory gives planet production through a tidal interaction between a condensed star and a diffuse protostar within a dense embedded cluster. Initial extensive and highly eccentric planetary orbits round-off and decay in a…
Kuiper Belt objects with absolute magnitude less than 3 (radius $\gtrsim$500 km), the dwarf planets, have a range of different ice/rock ratios, and are more rock-rich than their smaller counterparts. Many of these objects have moons, which…
The Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) exhibit an orbital clustering of the outer planets lying at perihelion distances larger than Neptune and semimajor axes greater than 150 AU from the Sun. This implies a hitherto unknown dynamical mechanism to…
In the near-Earth asteroid population, binary and triple systems have been discovered with mutual orbits that have significant eccentricities as well as large semi-major axes. All known systems with eccentric orbits and all widely-separated…
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…
In the last years several exoplanets have been discovered that orbit one component of a compact binary system (separation < 50 astronomical units), the probably best-known case is gamma-Cephei. So far, all attempts to explain the in-situ…
We have investigated the effect of the number of primordial binaries on the relationship between the total number of detected binaries within globular cluster and its collision rate. We have used simulated populations of binary stars in…
Most stars, binaries, and higher multiplicity systems are thought to form in stellar clusters and associations, which later dissociate. Very wide binaries can be easily disrupted in clusters due to dynamical evaporation (soft binaries)…
The modestly eccentric and non-coplanar orbits of the giant planets pose a challenge to solar system formation theories which generally indicate that the giant planets emerged from the protoplanetary disk in nearly perfectly circular and…
Observations and theoretical work suggest that globular clusters may be born with initially very large binary fractions. We present first results from our newly modified Monte-Carlo cluster evolution code, which treats binary interactions…