Related papers: The Sublimative Evolution of (486958) Arrokoth
Despite decades of effort, the mechanisms by which the spin axis of a star and the orbital axes of its planets become misaligned remain elusive. Particularly, it is of great interest whether the large spin-orbit misalignments observed are…
Context - Around the year 2000, Triton's south pole experienced an extreme summer solstice that occurs every about 650 years, when the subsolar latitude reached about 50{\deg}. Bracketing this epoch, a few occultations probed Triton's…
We consider the possibility that aeolian (wind blown) processes occur on small, 1 to 100~km diameter, planetesimals when they were embedded in the protosolar nebula. Drag from a headwind within a protostellar disk is sufficiently large to…
This paper examines the rigid body motion of a spheroid sedimenting in a Newtonian fluid with a spatially varying viscosity field. The fluid is at zero Reynolds number, and the viscosity varies linearly in space in an arbitrary direction…
The New Horizons spacecraft will achieve a wide range of measurement objectives at the Pluto system, including color and panchromatic maps, 1.25-2.50 micron spectral images for studying surface compositions, and measurements of Pluto's…
Asteroids and other small celestial bodies have markedly prolate shapes, and the perturbative triaxial torques which are applied during pericenter passages in highly eccentric orbits trigger and sustain a state of chaotic rotation. Because…
We carry out magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of the quasi-static evolution and eruption of a twisted coronal flux rope under a coronal streamer built up by an imposed flux emergence at the lower boundary. The MHD model incorporates a…
Protoplanetary disks start their lives with a dust free inner region where the temperatures are higher than the sublimation temperature of solids. As the star illuminates the innermost particles, which are immersed in gas at the sublimation…
The timescales over which the YORP effect alters the rotation period and the obliquity of a small asteroid can be very different, because the corresponding torques couple to different aspects of the object's shape. For nearly axisymmetric,…
Pluto's landscape is shaped by the cycles of the volatile ices covering its surface. In particular, the Sputnik Planitia (SP) ice sheet displays a large diversity of terrains, with bright and dark plains, pits, topographic depressions and…
A one dimensional sublimation model for cometary nuclei is used to derive size limits for the nuclei of sungrazing comets, and to estimate oxygen ion fluxes at 1 AU from their evaporation. Given that none of the ~300 sungrazers detected by…
The long-term dynamical evolution of asteroid families is governed by the interplay between orbital and rotational evolution driven by thermal forces and collision. We aim to observationally trace the rotational evolution of main-belt…
A statistical analysis of brightness variability of asteroids reveals how their shapes evolve from elongated to rough spheroidal forms, presumably driven by impact-related phenomena. Based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Moving Object…
We report a systematic analysis of the spin, orbital, and superorbital modulations of 4U 0114+650, a high-mass X-ray binary consists of one of the slowest spinning neutron stars. Utilizing the dynamic power spectrum, we found that the spin…
In planetary science, surface roughness is regarded to be a measure of surface irregularity at small spatial scales, and causes the thermal-infrared beaming effect (i.e. re-radiation of absorbed sunlight back towards to the Sun). Typically,…
The radial drift problem constitutes one of the most fundamental problems in planet formation theory, as it predicts particles to drift into the star before they are able to grow to planetesimal size. Dust-trapping vortices have been…
The New Horizons spacecraft's nominal trajectory crosses the planet's satellite plane at $\sim 10,000\ \rm{km}$ from the barycenter, between the orbits of Pluto and Charon. I have investigated the risk to the spacecraft based on…
We study a solid protoplanetary core of 1-10 earth masses migrating through a disk. We suppose the core luminosity is generated as a result of planetesimal accretion and calculate the structure of the gaseous envelope assuming equilibrium.…
Determining the mechanisms that drive the evolution of protoplanetary disks is a necessary step to understand how planets form. Here we measured the mass accretion rate for young stellar objects at age >5 Myr, a critical test for the…
A planet's axial tilt ("obliquity") substantially affects its atmosphere and habitability. It is thus essential to comprehend the various mechanisms that can excite planetary obliquities, particularly at the primordial stage. Here, we…