Related papers: Neptune's obliquity was likely engendered by Trito…
Agnor & Hamilton (2006) demonstrated that the disruption of a binary was an effective mechanism to capture Triton. The subsequent evolution of Triton's post-capture orbit could have proceeded through gravitational tides. The study by Agnor…
The obliquity of a planet is the tilt between its equator and its orbital plane. Giant planets are expected to form with near-zero obliquities. After its formation, some dynamical mechanism must therefore have tilted Saturn up to its…
Some of the satellites in the Solar System, including the Moon, appear to have been captured from heliocentric orbits at some point in their past, and then have evolved to the present configurations. The exact process of how this trapping…
The Neptunian satellite system is unusual, comprising Triton, a large ($\sim2700$ km) moon on a close-in, circular, yet retrograde orbit, flanked by Nereid, the largest irregular satellite ($\sim$300 km) on a highly eccentric orbit. Capture…
The current dynamical structure of the Kuiper belt was shaped by the orbital evolution of the giant planets, especially Neptune, during the era following planet formation, when the giant planets may have undergone planet-planet scattering…
Giant collisions can account for Uranus's and Neptune's large obliquities, yet generating two planets with widely different tilts and strikingly similar spin rates is a low-probability event. Trapping into a secular spin-orbit resonance, a…
The origin of the high inclination of Uranus' spin-axis (Uranus' obliquity) is one of the great unanswered questions about the Solar system. Giant planets are believed to form with nearly zero obliquity, and it has been shown that the…
There is an intriguing and growing population of Neptune-sized planets with stellar obliquities near $\sim90^{\circ}$. One previously proposed formation pathway is a disk-driven resonance, which can take place at the end stages of planet…
Uranus' startlingly large obliquity of 98 degrees has yet to admit a satisfactory explanation. The most widely accepted hypothesis involving a giant impactor that tipped Uranus onto its side encounters several difficulties with regards to…
Despite many similarities, there are significant observed differences between Uranus and Neptune: while Uranus is tilted and has a regular set of satellites, suggesting their accretion from a disk, Neptune's moons are irregular and are…
Context. The 98{\deg}-obliquity of Uranus is commonly attributed to giant impacts that occurred at the end of the planetary formation. This picture, however, is not devoid of weaknesses. Aims. On a billion-year timescale, the tidal…
Triton is a unique moon in our Solar System, being the only large moon to orbit on a retrograde and highly inclined orbit. As a result, it is thought that it did not form around Neptune, but rather was captured from heliocentric orbit. The…
The Neptunian satellite system is unusual. The major satellites of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus are all in prograde, low-inclination orbits. Neptune on the other hand, has the fewest satellites, and most of the system's mass is within one…
Recent work suggests that many short-period super-Earth and sub-Neptune planets may have significant spin axis tilts ("obliquities"). When planets are locked in high-obliquity states, the tidal dissipation rate may increase by several…
Aims: It has recently been shown that the fast migration of Titan could be responsible for the current 26.7{\deg}-tilt of Saturn's spin axis. We aim to quantify the level of generality of this result and to measure the most likely sets of…
Most Neptune-mass planets in close-in orbits (orbital periods less than a few days) present nonzero eccentricity, typically around 0.15. This is somehow unexpected, as these planets undergo strong tidal dissipation that should circularize…
We fit an isothermal oscillatory density model of Neptune's protoplanetary disk to the surviving regular satellites and its innermost ring and we determine the radial scale length of the disk, the equation of state and the central density…
Stochastic impacts by large bodies are, at present, the usually accepted mechanisms able to account for the obliquity of the ice giants. We attempt to set constraints on giant impacts as the cause of Neptune's current obliquity in the…
A planet's axial tilt ("obliquity") substantially affects its atmosphere and habitability. It is thus essential to comprehend the various mechanisms that can excite planetary obliquities, particularly at the primordial stage. Here, we…
The recent characterization of transiting close-in planets has revealed an intriguing population of sub-Neptunes with highly tilted and even polar orbits relative to their host star's equator. Any viable theory for the origin of these…