Related papers: Visual Orbits & Alignments of Planet Hosting Binar…
Planets have been observed in tight binary systems with separations less than 20 AU. A likely formation scenario for such systems involves a dynamical capture, after which high relative inclinations are likely and may lead to Kozai…
Mutually misaligned circumbinary planets may form in a warped or broken gas disc or from later planet-planet interactions. With numerical simulations and analytic estimates we explore the dynamics of two circumbinary planets with a large…
It is now clear that a binary formation pathway is responsible for a significant fraction of planetary nebulae, and this increased sample of known binaries means that we are now in a position to begin to constrain their influence on the…
The Kepler light curves used to detect thousands of planetary candidates are susceptible to dilution due to blending with previously unknown nearby stars. With the automated laser adaptive optics instrument, Robo-AO, we have observed 620…
Astronomical polarimetry is a powerful technique that can provide physical information sometimes difficult or impossible to obtain by any other type of observation. Almost every class of binary star can benefit from polarimetric…
We develop analytical tools and perform three-body simulations to investigate the orbital evolution and dynamical stability of binary planets within star clusters. Our analytical results show that the orbital stability of a planetary-mass…
As astronomers, we are living an exciting time for what concerns the search for other worlds. Recent discoveries have already deeply impacted our vision of planetary formation and architectures. Future bio-signature discoveries will…
The orientation between a star's spin axis and a planet's orbital plane provides valuable information about the system's formation and dynamical history. For non-transiting planets at wide separations, true stellar obliquities are…
Extrasolar multiple-planet systems provide valuable opportunities for testing theories of planet formation and evolution. The architectures of the known multiple-planet systems demonstrate a fascinating level of diversity, which motivates…
The presence of a nearby companion alters the evolution of massive stars in binary systems, leading to phenomena such as stellar mergers, X-ray binaries and gamma-ray bursts. Unambiguous constraints on the fraction of massive stars affected…
Stellar companions can influence the formation and evolution of planetary systems, but there are currently few observational constraints on the properties of planet-hosting binary star systems. We search for stellar companions around 77…
The Kepler mission has provided high quality light curves for more than 2000 eclipsing binaries. Tertiary companions to these binaries can be detected if they transit one or both stars in the binary or if they perturb the binary enough to…
Statistics of orbital parameters of binary stars as well as statistics of their physical characteristics bear traces of star formation history. However, statistical investigations of binaries are complicated by lacking or incomplete…
Most exoplanets have been discovered via radial velocity studies, which are inherently insensitive to orbital inclination. Interferometric observations will show evidence of a stellar companion if it sufficiently bright, regardless of the…
Surveys of nearby field stars indicate that stellar binaries are common, yet little is known about the effects that these companions may have on planet formation and evolution. The Friends of Hot Jupiters project uses three complementary…
There are several physical processes that mediate the interaction between an exoplanet and its host star, with the four main ones being due to magnetic, particle (stellar outflow), radiative and tidal interactions. These interactions can be…
The habitability of planets in binary star systems depends not only on the radiation environment created by the two stars, but also on the perturbations to planetary orbits and rotation produced by the gravitational field of the binary and…
Galactic globular clusters are old, dense star systems typically containing 10\super{4}--10\super{7} stars. As an old population of stars, globular clusters contain many collapsed and degenerate objects. As a dense population of stars,…
The long-term habitability of Earth-like planets requires low orbital eccentricities. A secular perturbation from a distant stellar companion is a very important mechanism in exciting planetary eccentricities, as many of the extrasolar…
A widely considered characteristic of extra-solar planetary systems has been a seeming tendency for major axes of adjacent orbits to librate in stable configurations. Based on a new catalog of extra-solar planets (Butler et al. 2006) and…