Related papers: The Minimum Mass of Planets, Dwarf Planets, and Pl…
6500+ exoplanets have been detected using various techniques. This prompted the emergence of many recent works on the taxonomy, or classification, of exoplanets. However, there is still no basic, fundamental definition of 'What is a…
Gravitational and electronic forces produce a correlation between the mass and shape of objects in the universe. For example, at an average radius of ~ 200 km - 300 km, the icy moons and rocky asteroids of our Solar System transition from a…
Experience shows that celestial bodies have a nearly round shape only from a certain size. At IAU resolution B5, item b, that shape serves as an indicator for a distinct mechanism of its forming, caused by a minimum of mass. Rigid body…
The mass domain where massive extrasolar planets and brown dwarfs lay is still poorly understood. Indeed, not even a clear dividing line between massive planets and brown dwarfs has been established yet. This is partly due to the paucity of…
In antiquity, all of the enduring celestial bodies that were seen to move relative to the background sky of stars were considered planets. During the Copernican revolution, this definition was altered to objects orbiting around the Sun,…
The study of the interior of the planets requires the knowledge of how certain parameters, as radius and mean density, vary according to the planet mass. The aim of this work is to use known data of the Solar System Planets and Transiting…
A planetary mass scale and a system of composition codes are presented for describing the geophysical characteristics of exoplanets and Solar System planets, dwarf planets, and spherical moons. The composition classes characterize the rock,…
Radial velocity planet search surveys of nearby Solar-type stars have shown a strong deficit of brown dwarf companions within $\sim5\,\mathrm{AU}$. There is presently no comprehensive explanation of this lack of brown dwarf companions,…
The conditions that a planet must fulfill to be habitable are not precisely known. However, it is comparatively easier to define conditions under which a planet is very likely not habitable. Finding such conditions is important as it can…
Brown dwarfs are intermediate objects between planets and stars. The lower end of the brown-dwarf mass range overlaps with the one of massive planets and therefore the distinction between planets and brown-dwarf companions may require to…
We study the masses and radii of 65 exoplanets smaller than 4 Earth radii with orbital periods shorter than 100 days. We calculate the weighted mean densities of planets in bins of 0.5 Earth radii and identify a density maximum of 7.6 g/cc…
Doppler velocity measurements from the Anglo-Australian Planet Search reveal planetary mass companions to HD23127, HD159868, and a possible second planetary companion to HD154857. These stars are all G dwarfs. The companions are all in…
We investigate the minimum planet mass that produces observable signatures in infrared scattered light and submm continuum images and demonstrate how these images can be used to measure planet masses to within a factor of about two. To this…
Small planets ($\lesssim 1$ M$_\oplus$) at intermediate orbital distances ($\sim$1 au) represent an uncharted territory in exoplanetary science. The upcoming microlensing survey by the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will be sensitive to…
We aim to determine the relative angle between the total angular momentum of the minor planets and that of the Sun-planets system, and to improve the orientation of the invariable plane of the solar system. By utilizing physical parameters…
A measurement by microlensing of the planetary mass function of planets with masses ranging from 5M_E to 10M_J and orbital radii from 0.5 to 10 AU was reported recently. A strategy for extending the mass range down to (1-3)M_E is proposed…
Recent observations point to the presence of structured dust grains in the discs surrounding young brown dwarfs, thus implying that the first stages of planet formation take place also in the sub-stellar regime. Here, we investigate the…
We analytically work out the long-term variations caused on the motion of a planet orbiting a star by a very distant, pointlike massive object X. Apart from the semi-major axis a, all the other Keplerian osculating orbital elements…
Recently revealed differences in planets around M dwarf vs. solar-type stars could arise from differences in their primordial disks, and surveys of T Tauri stars find a correlation between stellar mass and disk mass. "Minimum" disks have…
We establish new dynamical constraints on the mass and abundance of compact objects in the halo of dwarf spheroidal galaxies. In order to preserve kinematically cold the second peak of the Ursa Minor dwarf spheroidal (UMi dSph) against…