Related papers: Oort Cloud Ecology -- IV. Exchanging Asteroids

We use numerical N-body simulations of the Orion Nebula Cluster (ONC) to investigate the destruction of protoplanetary disks by close stellar encounters and UV radiation from massive stars. The simulations model a cluster of 4000 stars, and…

Using multi-wavelength imaging from the Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope we study the stellar cluster populations of two adjacent fields in the nearby face-on spiral galaxy, M83. The observations cover the galactic centre…

Most stars form in a clustered environment. Both single and binary stars will sometimes encounter planetary systems in such crowded environments. Encounter rates for binaries may be larger than for single stars, even for binary fractions as…

We have simulated encounters between planetary systems and single stars in various clustered environments. This allows us to estimate the fraction of systems liberated, the velocity distribution of the liberated planets, and the separation…

We analyze the physical properties of stellar clusters that are detected in massive star-forming regions in the MYStIX project--a comparative, multiwavelength study of young stellar clusters within 3.6 kpc that contain at least one O-type…

Unexpected clustering in the orbital elements of minor bodies beyond the Kuiper belt has led to speculations that our solar system actually hosts nine planets, the eight established plus a hypothetical "Planet Nine". Several recent studies…

The size distribution and total mass of objects in the Oort Cloud have important implications to the theory of planets formation, including the properties of, and the processes taking place in the early solar system. We discuss the…

We examine the spatial distribution of star clusters in NGC 628 using the statistical tool INDICATE to quantify clustering tendencies. Our sample, based on HST and JWST observations, is the most complete to date, spanning ages from 1 Myr to…

The Oort cloud, a collection of icy bodies orbiting the sun at roughly $10^{3}$ AU to $10^{5}$ AU, is believed to be the source of the long-period comets observed in the inner solar system. Although its existence was predicted nearly 70…

We investigate the triggering of star formation and the formation of stellar clusters in molecular clouds that form as the ISM passes through spiral shocks. The spiral shock compresses gas into $\sim$100 pc long main star formation ridge,…

We present a Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) imaging study that characterizes the star cluster component of nearby galaxy outer disks (beyond the optical radius R_25). Expanding on the pilot project of Herbert-Fort et al. (2009), we present…

Stars are born within dense clumps of giant molecular clouds, constituting young stellar agglomerates known as embedded clusters, which only evolve into bound open clusters under special conditions. We statistically study all embedded…

Stars originate from the dense interstellar medium, which exhibits filamentary structure to scales of $\sim 1$ kpc in galaxies like our Milky Way. We explore quantitatively how much resulting large-scale correlation there is among different…

The standard picture of accretion is a steady flow of matter from the disc onto the young star - a concept which assumes the star-disc system to be completely isolated. However, in a dense cluster environment star-disc systems do interact…

Most stars form in highly clustered environments within molecular clouds, but eventually disperse into the distributed stellar field population. Exactly how the stellar distribution evolves from the embedded stage into gas-free associations…

Observations and theory both suggest that star clusters form sub-virial (cool) with highly sub-structured distributions. We perform a large ensemble of N-body simulations of moderate-sized (N=1000) cool, fractal clusters to investigate…

How stellar clusters disrupt, and over what timescales, is intimately linked with how they form. Here, we review the theory and observations of cluster disruption, both the suggested initial rapid dissolution phase (infant mortality) and…

We perform simulations of star cluster formation to investigate the morphological evolution of embedded star clusters in the earliest stages of their evolution. We conduct our simulations with Torch, which uses the AMUSE framework to couple…

Planet formation is generally described in terms of a system containing the host star and a protoplanetary disc, of which the internal properties (e.g. mass and metallicity) determine the properties of the resulting planetary system.…

What is the nature of a star forming clump? Observations reveal these to be chaotic environments being modified and influenced by many physical processes. However, numerical simulations often define these initial star forming clumps to be…