Related papers: Capture of Interstellar Objects and Binaries
The Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) exhibit an orbital clustering of the outer planets lying at perihelion distances larger than Neptune and semimajor axes greater than 150 AU from the Sun. This implies a hitherto unknown dynamical mechanism to…
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is expected to increase interstellar object (ISO) detections from a few over the past decade to potentially one per few months, demanding a systematic classification scheme. We present the Loeb Scale, formally…
The irregular satellites of outer planets are thought to have been captured from heliocentric orbits. The exact nature of the capture process, however, remains uncertain. We examine the possibility that irregular satellites were captured…
A complete manual search has been carried out of the list of 285423 objects, nearly all of them galaxies, identified in the COSMOS field that are brighter than I=25. Two certain and one highly probable new gravitational lenses are found, in…
The frequency of multiple systems and their properties are key constraints of stellar formation and evolution. Formation mechanisms of very low-mass (VLM) objects are still under considerable debate and an accurate assessment of their…
The dynamical influence of binary companions is expected to profoundly influence planetary systems. However, the difficulty of identifying planets in binary systems has left the magnitude of this effect uncertain; despite numerous…
We examine the selection effects that determine how the population of inspiraling binary compact objects (BCOs) is reflected by those potentially observed with ground-based interferometers like LIGO. We lay the ground-work for the…
The non-detection of a coma surrounding 1I/`Oumuamua, the first discovered interstellar object (ISO), has prompted a variety of hypotheses to explain its nongravitational acceleration. Given that forthcoming surveys are poised to identify…
During the formation and evolution of the Solar System, significant numbers of cometary and asteroidal bodies were ejected into interstellar space$^{1,2}$. It can be reasonably expected that the same happened for planetary systems other…
Observations of binary inspiral in a single interferometric gravitational wave detector can be cataloged according to signal-to-noise ratio $\rho$ and chirp mass $\cal M$. The distribution of events in a catalog composed of observations…
The recent discovery of binary objects in the Kuiper-belt opens an invaluable window into past and present conditions in the trans-Neptunian part of the Solar System. For example, knowledge of how these objects formed can be used to impose…
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…
The discovery of two interstellar objects passing through the Solar System, 1I/`Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov, implies that a galactic population exists with a spatial number density of order $\sim0.1$ au$^{-3}$. The forthcoming Rubin Observatory…
The Kozai mechanism often destabilises high inclination orbits. It couples changes in the eccentricity and inclination, and drives high inclination, circular orbits to low inclination, eccentric orbits. In a recent study of the dynamics of…
Abridged: The discovery of "hot Jupiters" very close to their parent stars confirmed that Jovian planets migrate inward via several potential mechanisms. We present empirical constraints on planet migration halting mechanisms. We compute…
The ESA Euclid mission will survey more than 14,000 deg$^2$ of the sky in visible and near-infrared wavelengths, mapping the extra-galactic sky to constrain our cosmological model of the Universe. Although the survey focusses on regions…
Small Solar system bodies serve as pristine records that have been minimally altered since their formation. Their observations provide valuable information regarding the formation and evolution of our Solar system. Interstellar objects…
Here we examine the relationship between the virial and stellar mass for a range of old stellar systems, from GCs to giant ellipticals, and including such Intermediate Mass Objects (IMOs). Improvements on previous work in this area include…
All four giant planets in the Solar system possess irregular satellites, characterized by large, highly eccentric and/or inclined orbits that are distinct from the nearly circular, uninclined orbits of the regular satellites. This…
We describe properties and gravitational interactions of meteor-mass and greater compact ultra dense objects with nuclear density or greater (CUDO s). We discuss possible enclosure of CUDO s in comets, stability of these objects on impact…