Related papers: The missing rings around Solar System moons
The architecture and evolution of planetary systems are shaped in part by stellar flybys. Within this context, we look at stellar encounters which are too weak to immediately destabilize a planetary system but are nevertheless strong enough…
Given the inexorable increase in the Sun's luminosity, Earth will exit the habitable zone in ~1 Gyr. There is a negligible chance that Earth's orbit will change during that time through internal Solar System dynamics. However, there is a…
The best constraints on the internal structures of giant planets have historically come from measurements of their gravity fields. These gravity data are inherently mostly sensitive to a planet's outer regions, providing only loose…
Our understanding of the structure and dynamics of stellar coronae has changed dramatically with the availability of surface maps of both star spots and also magnetic field vectors. Magnetic field extrapolations from these surface maps…
With most planets and planetary candidates detected in the stellar habitable zone (HZ) being super-Earths and gas giants, rather than Earth-like planets, we naturally wonder if their moons could be habitable. The first detection of such an…
We investigated the formation and evolution of satellite systems in a cold, extended circumplanetary disc around a 10 $M_{\rm{Jupiter}}$ gas giant which was formed by gravitational instability at 50\,AU from its star. The disc parameters…
The past decade has seen major progress in our understanding of terrestrial planet formation. Yet key questions remain. In this review we first address the growth of 100 km-scale planetesimals as a consequence of dust coagulation and…
Suggestions have been made that asteroid belts may be important both for the existence of life and perhaps even for the evolution of complex life on a planet. Using numerical models for protoplanetary discs we calculate the location of the…
It is thought that, sometime after their formation, the solar system's giant planets experienced a dynamical instability that caused their orbits to excite, diverge, and ejected one or more objects with masses comparable to the ice giants.…
The formation of a planetary system from the protoplanetary disk leads to destruction of the latter; however, a debris disk can remain in the form of asteroids and cometary material. The motion of planets can cause the formation of…
B[e] Supergiants are a phase in the evolution of some massive stars for which we have observational evidence but no predictions by any stellar evolution model. The mass-loss during this phase creates a complex circumstellar environment with…
We now know that the outer solar system is host to at least six diverse planetary ring systems, each of which is a scientifically compelling target with the potential to inform us about the evolution, history and even the internal structure…
From the numerous detected planets outside the Solar system, no terrestrial planet comparable to our Earth has been discovered so far. The search for an Exo-Earth is certainly a big challenge which may require the detections of planetary…
Three ring systems have been discovered to date around small irregular objects of the solar system (Chariklo, Haumea and Quaoar). For the three bodies, material is observed near the second-order 1/3 Spin-Orbit Resonance (SOR) with the…
Radio wavelength observations of solar system bodies are a powerful method of probing many characteristics of those bodies. From surface and subsurface, to atmospheres (including deep atmospheres of the giant planets), to rings, to the…
Pluto's system of 5 known satellites are in a puzzling orbital configuration. Each of the four small satellites are on low-eccentricity and low-inclination orbits situated near a mean motion resonance with the largest satellite Charon. The…
Recent observations revealed that several extremely low-density exoplanets show featureless transmission spectra. While atmospheric aerosols are a promising explanation for both the low density and featureless spectra, there is another…
The small bodies in the Kuiper Belt region of the distant Solar System are leftovers from planet formation. Their orbital distribution today tells us about how giant planets migrated, while their surface properties, shapes, and sizes tell…
Surveys have revealed many multi-planet systems containing super-Earths and Neptunes in orbits of a few days to a few months. There is debate whether in situ assembly or inward migration is the dominant mechanism of the formation of such…
Motion of a point mass in gravitational fields of the Sun and of the galactic disk is studied. Fundamental features of the motion are found by investigating the time-averaged differential equations for orbital evolution. Several types of…