Related papers: Synchronisation of a tidal binary by inward orbita…
A giant collision is believed to be at the origin of the Pluto-Charon system. As a result, the initial orbit and spins after impact may have substantially differed from those observed today. More precisely, the distance at periapse may have…
This study explores the gravitational interaction between Pluto and its moon Charon, which has led to their synchronous orbit, where they consistently show the same face to each other. This process is known as tidal evolution, which…
Moons tidally interact with their host planets and stars. A close moon is quickly synchronised by the planet, or becomes captured in a higher spin-orbit resonance. However, the planet requires much more time to significantly alter its…
Both Pluto and its satellite Charon have rotation rates synchronous with their orbital mean motion. This is the theoretical end point of tidal evolution where transfer of angular momentum has ceased. Here we follow Pluto's tidal evolution…
The Pluto-Charon system, likely formed from an impact, has reached the endpoint of its tidal evolution. During its evolution into the dual-synchronous state, the equilibrium tidal figures of Pluto and Charon would have also evolved as…
The Pluto-Charon (PC) pair is usually thought of as a binary in the dual synchronous state, which is the endpoint of its tidal evolution. The discovery of the small circumbinary moons, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra, placed close to the…
Using the Andrade-derived Sundberg-Cooper rheology, we apply several improvements to the secular tidal evolution of TRAPPIST-1e and the early history of Pluto-Charon under the simplifying assumption of homogeneous bodies. By including…
Tidal torques can alter the spins of tidally interacting stars and planets, usually over shorter timescales than the tidal damping of orbital separations or eccentricities. Simple tidal models predict that, in eccentric binary or planetary…
Current theory considers two options for the formation of the Pluto-Charon binary (Canup 2005, 2011; Desch 2015). In the `hit-and-run' model, a lower mass projectile barely hits the more massive Pluto, kicks up some debris, and remains…
Pluto's recently discovered minor moons, Nix and Hydra, have almost circular orbits, and are nearly coplanar with Charon, Pluto's major moon. This is surprising because tidal interactions with Pluto are too weak to damp their…
This report is a review of Darwin's classical theory of bodily tides in which we present the analytical expressions for the orbital and rotational evolution of the bodies and for the energy dissipation rates due to their tidal interaction.…
We provide a generalized discussion of tidal evolution to arbitrary order in the expansion of the gravitational potential between two spherical bodies of any mass ratio. To accurately reproduce the tidal evolution of a system at separations…
The orbits of Pluto's four small satellites (Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra) are nearly circular and coplanar with the orbit of the large satellite Charon, with orbital periods nearly in the ratios 3:1, 4:1, 5:1, and 6:1 with Charon's…
Existence of subsurface oceans on the satellites of the giant planets and Trans-Neptunian objects has been predicted for some time. Oceans on icy worlds exert a considerable influence on the dynamics of the ice-ocean system and, because of…
We present a comprehensive theoretical study on the spin evolution of a planet under the combined effects of tidal dissipation and gravitational perturbation from an external companion. Such a "spin + companion" system (called Colombo's…
We perform numerical simulations of the TRAPPIST-1 system of seven exoplanets orbiting a nearby M dwarf, starting with a previously suggested stable configuration. The long-term stability of this configuration is confirmed, but the motion…
Recent discoveries of several transiting planets with clearly non-zero eccentricities and some large inclinations started changing the simple picture of close-in planets having circular and well-aligned orbits. Two major scenarios to form…
A self-consistent model for binary evolution devised by Gingold \& Monaghan (1980) is used to show that two distinctly different types of behaviour are possible for close eccentric binaries. The model is based on a linear adiabatic normal…
We consider a scenario where the small satellites of Pluto and Charon grew within a disk of debris from an impact between Charon and a trans-Neptunian Object (TNO). After Charon's orbital motion boosts the debris into a disk-like structure,…
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…