Related papers: Appulses of Jupiter and Saturn
The great conjunction of 21 December 2020 saw Jupiter and Saturn appear together in the sky, separated by just a tenth of a degree (equivalent to a distance five times smaller than the diameter of the full Moon). This provided a potential…
This article is inspired by the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn on December 21st, 2020. We will address the following questions from a mathematical standpoint. What is a conjunction? How often do we have a conjunction of two…
In support of studies of decadal-timescale evolution of outer solar system atmospheres and ring systems, we present detailed Earth-based stellar occultation predictions for Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Titan, and Triton for 2023-2050,…
Every 19 years, Saturn passes through Jupiter's 'flapping' magnetotail. Here, we report Chandra X-ray observations of Saturn planned to coincide with this rare planetary alignment and to analyse Saturn's magnetospheric response when…
Saturn's quasi-periodic planet-encircling storms are the largest convecting outbursts in the Solar System. The last eruption was in 1990. A new eruption started in December 2010 and presented the first-ever opportunity to observe such…
Anderson & Schubert (2007, Science,317,1384) proposed that Saturn's rotation period can be ascertained by minimizing the dynamic heights of the 100 mbar isosurface with respect to the geoid; they derived a rotation period of 10h 32m 35s. We…
Video observations of Jupiter obtained by amateur astronomers over the past eight years have shown five flashes of light of 1-2 s. The first three of these events occurred on 3 June 2010, 20 August 2010, and 10 September 2012. Previous…
On 2009 July 19, we observed a single, large impact on Jupiter at a planetocentric latitude of 55^{\circ}S. This and the Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL9) impacts on Jupiter in 1994 are the only planetary-scale impacts ever observed. The 2009 impact…
A stellar occultation by Pluto on 5 September 2019 yielded positive detections at two separate stations. Using an approach consistent with comparable studies, we derived a surface pressure of $11.478 \pm 0.55~\mathrm{\mu bar}$ for Pluto's…
Microlensing is the only technique likely, within the next 5 years, to constrain the frequency of Jupiter-analogs. The PLANET collaboration has monitored nearly 100 microlensing events of which more than 20 have sensitivity to the…
The obliquity of a planet is the tilt between its equator and its orbital plane. Giant planets are expected to form with near-zero obliquities. After its formation, some dynamical mechanism must therefore have tilted Saturn up to its…
The co-orbital satellites of Saturn, Janus and Epimetheus, swap radial positions every 4.0 years. Since \textit{Cassini} has been in orbit about Saturn, this has occurred on 21 January in 2006, 2010, and 2014. We describe the effects of…
The atmosphere of Triton was probed directly by observing a ground-based stellar occultation on 6 October 2022. This rare event yielded 23 positive light curves collected from 13 separate observation stations contributing to our campaign.…
We report the discovery of a new exoplanet candidate orbiting the star GJ 3470. A total of three transits were detected by OKSky Observatory: the first one on December 23, 2019, the second one on February 27, 2020, and the third one on May…
Transits of Mercury and Venus across the face of the Sun are rare. The 20th century had 15 transits of Mercury and the 21st century will have 14, the two most recent occuring on 15 November 1999 and 7 May 2003. We report on our observations…
The technique of mutual approximations accurately gives the central instant at the maximum apparent approximation of two moving natural satellites in the sky plane. This can be used in ephemeris fitting to infer the relative positions…
Hot Neptunes, gaseous planets smaller than Saturn ($\sim$ 3-8 R$_\oplus$) with orbital periods less than 10 days, are rare. Models predict this is due to high-energy stellar irradiation stripping planetary atmospheres over time, often…
We search for signatures of planets in 43 intensively monitored microlensing events that were observed between 1995 and 1999. Planets would be expected to cause a short duration (~1 day) deviation on the smooth, symmetric light curve…
We report the empirical detection of a multi-planet quasi-commensurability in the Solar System and identify an anomalous exclusion that may bear on the dynamical history of Uranus. An exhaustive search identifies T* = 420,403 days (approx.…
Models of the dynamical evolution of the early solar system following the dispersal of the gaseous protoplanetary disk have been widely successful in reconstructing the current orbital configuration of the giant planets. Statistically, some…