Related papers: Chasing Nomadic Worlds: A New Class of Deep Space …
M dwarf stars, which have masses less than 60 per cent that of the Sun, make up 75 per cent of the population of the stars in the Galaxy [1]. The atmospheres of orbiting Earth-sized planets are observationally accessible via transmission…
The study of planets beyond the solar system and the search for other habitable planets and life is just beginning. Ground-based (radial velocity and transits) and space-based surveys (transits and astrometry) will identify planets spanning…
Celestial observations often exhibit inexplicable planetary dependencies when the timing of an observable is projected onto planetary heliocentric positions. This is possible only for incident, non-relativistic streams. Notably, the…
Of the approximately 350 extrasolar planets currently known, of order 10% orbit evolved stars with radii R >~ 2.5 R_sun. These planets are of particular interest because they tend to orbit more massive hosts, and have been subjected to…
We have explored a method for finding giant planets in the outer Solar System by detecting their thermal emission and proper motion between two far-infrared all-sky surveys separated by 23.4 years, taken with the InfraRed Astronomical…
Free-floating planets are a new class of planets recently discovered. These planets don't orbit within stellar systems, instead living a nomadic life within the galaxy. How such objects formed remains elusive. Numerous works have explored…
Peculiar velocities are the motions of galaxies due to the gravitational influence of large-scale structure, and thus are an important cosmological probe of the underlying matter density field. In recent years the number of surveys designed…
Despite numerous search campaigns based on a diverse set of observational techniques, exomoons - prospective satellites of extrasolar planets - remain an elusive and hard-to-pin-down class of objects. Yet, the case for intensifying this…
The recently discovered first high velocity hyperbolic objects passing through the Solar System, 1I/'Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov, have raised the question about near term missions to Interstellar Objects. In situ spacecraft exploration of these…
The recently discovered population of interstellar objects presents us with the opportunity to characterize material from extrasolar planetary and stellar systems up close. The forthcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space…
The NASA Kepler and K2 Missions have recently revealed a population of transiting giant planets orbiting moderately evolved, low-luminosity red giant branch stars. Here, we present radial velocity measurements of three of these systems,…
Galaxy interactions leave imprints in the motions of their stars, and so observing the two-dimensional stellar kinematics allows us to uncover their formation process. Slow rotators, which have stellar orbits dominated by random motions,…
Recent observations and detections of interstellar objects (ISOs) passing through the solar system have sparked a wave of interest into these objects. Although rare, these ISOs can be captured into bound orbits around the Sun. In this…
I review those properties of the interstellar medium within 15 light-years of the Sun which will be relevant for the planning of future rapid ($v /ge 0.1c$) interstellar space missions to the nearest stars. As the detailed properties of the…
We demonstrate that stars beyond the virial radii of galaxies may be generated by the gravitational impulse received by a satellite as it passes through the pericenter of its orbit around its parent. These stars may become energetically…
The habitable zones of low-mass stars are characterized by escape speeds that can be a few times higher than the Earth's orbit around the Sun. Owing to the exponential dependence of the required fuel mass on the terminal speed for chemical…
The premise of "near-field cosmology" is that the study of nearby low-mass galaxies on a star-by-star basis has implications that extend far beyond the local Universe and include the nature of dark matter, lives and deaths of the first…
Globular clusters are ancient stellar populations with no star formation or core-collapse supernovae. Several lines of evidence suggest that globular clusters are rich in planets. If so, and if advanced civilizations can develop there, then…
This paper reports a blind search for magnetospheric emissions from planets around nearby stars. Young stars are likely to have much stronger stellar winds than the Sun, and because planetary magnetospheric emissions are powered by stellar…
Planets orbiting a planetesimal circumstellar disc can migrate inward from their initial positions because of dynamical friction between planets and planetesimals. The migration rate depends on the disc mass and on its time evolution.…