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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…
We explore the atmospheric and surface history of a hypothetical paleo-Venus climate using a 3-D General Circulation Model. We constrain our model with the in-situ and remote sensing Venus data available today. Given that Venus and Earth…
With over 1800 planets discovered outside of the Solar System in the past two decades, the field of exoplanetology has broadened our perspective on planetary systems. Research priorities are now moving from planet detection to planet…
The ability of a planet to maintain surface water, key to life as we know it, depends on solar and planetary energy. As a star ages, it delivers more energy to a planet. As a planet ages it produces less internal heat, which leads to…
Brown dwarfs are commonly regarded as easily-observed templates for exoplanet studies, with comparable masses, physical sizes and atmospheric properties. There is indeed considerable overlap in the photospheric temperatures of the coldest…
In contrast to the Earth, where frictional heating is typically negligible, we show that drag mechanisms could act as an important heat source in the strongly-forced atmospheres of some exoplanets, with the potential to alter the…
We present a coupled 3-D atmospheric dynamics and radiative transfer model to predict the disk-integrated thermal emission spectra of transiting exoplanets in edge-on orbits. We calculate spectra at high resolution to examine the extent to…
Evidence of mutually inclined planetary orbits has been reported for giant planets these last years. Here we aim to study the impact of eccentric and inclined massive giant planets on the terrestrial planet formation process, and…
A simple dynamical model is employed to study the possible orbital evolution of scattered planets and phase plane analysis is used to classify the parameter space and solutions. Our results reconfirm that there is always an increase in…
Changes in planetary obliquity, or axial tilt, influence the climates on Earth-like planets. In the solar system, the Earth's obliquity is stabilized due to interactions with our moon and the resulting {small amplitude variations…
Efforts to characterize extrasolar giant planet (EGP) atmospheres have so far emphasized planets within 0.05 AU of their stars. Despite this focus, known EGPs populate a continuum of orbital separations from canonical hot Jupiter values…
Exomoons may play an important role in determining the habitability of worlds outside of our solar system. They can stabilize conditions, alter the climate by breaking tidal locking with the parent star, drive tidal heating, and perhaps…
Observations of exoplanets have revealed that systems with planets on closely-spaced orbits are common, which motivates the question "How closely can planets orbit to one another and still be dynamically-stable for very long times?". To…
Of the over 200 known extrasolar planets, 14 exhibit transits in front of their parent stars as seen from Earth. Spectroscopic observations of the transiting planets can probe the physical conditions of their atmospheres. One such technique…
A survey of currently known planet-hosting stars indicates that approximately 25% of extrasolar planetary systems are within dual-star environments. Several of these systems contain stellar companions on moderately close orbits, implying…
Improving upon our purely dynamical work, we present three-dimensional simulations of the atmospheric circulation on Earth-like (exo)planets and hot Jupiters using the GFDL-Princeton Flexible Modeling System (FMS). As the first steps away…
Contrary to Earth, which has a small orbital eccentricity, some exoplanets discovered in the insolation habitable zone (HZ) have high orbital eccentricities (e.g., up to an eccentricity of $\sim0.97$ for HD~20782~b). This raises the…
Extrasolar terrestrial planets with the potential to host life might have large obliquities or be subject to strong obliquity variations. We revisit the habitability of oblique planets with an energy balance climate model (EBM) allowing for…
The extrasolar planets discovered to date possess unexpected orbital elements. Most orbit their host stars with larger eccentricities and smaller semi-major axes than similarly sized planets in our own solar system do. It is generally…
Ground-based and spacecraft telescopic observations, combined with an intensive modeling effort, have greatly enhanced our understanding of hot giant planets and brown dwarfs over the past ten years. Although these objects are all fluid,…