Related papers: Centaur Nuclei: Sizes, Shapes, Spins, and Structur…
We investigate the properties and evolution of star particles in two simulations of isolated spiral galaxies, and two galaxies from cosmological simulations. Unlike previous numerical work, where typically each star particle represents one…
We describe analytical and numerical collisional evolution calculations for the size distribution of icy bodies in the Kuiper Belt. For a wide range of bulk properties, initial masses, and orbital parameters, our results yield power-law…
Colors of Trans Neptunian Objects (TNOs) are used to study the evolutionary processes of bodies in the outskirts of the Solar System, and to test theories regarding their origin. Here I describe a search for serendipitous Sloan Digital Sky…
There are growing amount of very high-resolution polarized scattered light images of circumstellar disks. Nascent giant planets planets are surrounded by their own circumplanetary disks which may scatter and polarize both the planetary and…
Impact basins identified by Mariner 10 and Messenger flyby images provide us a fossilized record of the impactor flux of asteroids on Mercury during the last stages of the early Solar System. The distribution of these basins is not uniform…
The process by which a system of non-luminous bodies form around a star is fundamental to understanding the origins of our own solar system and how it fits into the context of other systems we have begun to study around other stars. Some…
An important part of cosmological model fitting relies on correlating distance indicators of objects (for example type Ia supernovae) with their redshift, often illustrated on a Hubble diagram. Comparing the observed correlation with a…
The shapes of neutrino spectra and fluxes from representative stars in the solar neighborhood up to 10 pc are calculated. The individual contribution of the most important, specific stellar objects (the alpha-Centauri system, Sirius A,…
A question central to understanding the origin of our solar system is: how do planets form in circumstellar disks around young stars? Because of the complex nature of the physical processes involved, multi-wavelength observations of large…
Transiting circumbinary planets discovered by Kepler provide unique insight into binary star and planet formation. Several features of this new found population, for example the apparent pile-up of planets near the innermost stable orbit,…
The nuclear star cluster surrounding the massive black hole at the Galactic Centre consists of young and old stars, with most of the stellar mass in an extended, cuspy distribution of old stars. The compact cluster of young stars was…
Understanding the origin and long-term evolution of the Solar System is a fundamental goal of planetary science and astrophysics. This chapter describes our current understanding of the key processes that shaped our planetary system,…
Circumstellar disks play an important role in many stages of the evolution of stars. However, it is only possible to directly image circumstellar disks for a few of the nearest stars. For massive stars, the situation is even more difficult,…
We present J, H and K-band images and 0.9-2.5 micron spectra of the nuclear regions of Centaurus A obtained with IRIS on the AAT. While K band has a point source coincident with the nucleus, at H and J we identify diffuse structure…
We used the near infrared spectrometer ISAAC at the ESO 'Very Large Telescope' to map the velocity field of Centaurus A (NGC 5128) at several position angles and locations in the central 20" of the galaxy. The high spatial resolution…
We consider whether the hard X-ray and soft gamma-ray emission from Centaurus A is beamed radiation from the active nucleus which is Compton-scattered into our line-of-sight. We derive the spectrum and degree of polarization of scattered…
We explore test particle orbits in the orbital plane of eccentric stellar binary systems, searching for ``invariant loops'': closed curves that change shape periodically as a function of binary orbital phase as the test particles in them…
We have investigated whether or not a tidal stripping scenario can reproduce the observed surface-brightness profile of omega Centauri using N-body simulations. Assuming that the progenitor of omega Centauri is a dwarf elliptical galaxy, we…
An attempt to determine spatial location of the main source of short-period comet nuclei was made. There were carried out numerical calculations for orbit evolution of Jupiter family comets, comets with middle-period orbits and bodies of…
Secular evolution gradually shapes galaxies by internal processes, in contrast to early cosmological evolution which is more rapid. An important driver of secular evolution is the flow of gas from the disk into the central regions, often…