Related papers: Measuring Apsidal Clustering
Most circumbinary planets have been discovered by their transits, limiting our understanding of such systems to those with mutually coplanar architectures. This bias makes it difficult to infer the true circumbinary planet population,…
We analytically work out the long-term variations caused on the motion of a planet orbiting a star by a very distant, pointlike massive object X. Apart from the semi-major axis a, all the other Keplerian osculating orbital elements…
Past years have seen various publications attempting to explain the apparent clustering features of trans-Neptunian objects, the most popular explanation being an unconfirmed "Planet 9". The recently proposed Uranus Orbiter and Probe…
Making an inventory of the Solar System is one of the four fundamental science requirements for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). The current baseline footprint for LSST's main Wide-Fast-Deep (WFD) Survey observes the sky below…
The discovery of rings around extrasolar planets ("exorings") is one of the next breakthroughs in exoplanetary research. Previous studies have explored the feasibility of detecting exorings with present and future photometric sensitivities…
A new method for the determination of open cluster membership based on a cumulative effect is proposed. In the field of a plate the relative x and y coordinate positions of each star with respect to all the other stars are added. The…
It is now well known that a combined analysis of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect and the X-ray emission observations can be used to determine the angular diameter distance to galaxy clusters, from which the Hubble constant is derived.…
The properties of clusters of galaxies offer key insights into the assembly process of structure in the universe. Numerical simulations of cosmic structure formation in a hierarchical, dark matter dominated universe suggest that galaxy…
The dynamical interactions of planetary systems may be a clue to their formation histories. Therefore, the distribution of these interactions provides important constraints on models of planet formation. We focus on each system's apsidal…
We have established an internally consistent Local Group distance framework, using the Galactic Center, the Large Magellanic Cloud, and Messier 31 (M31) as important stepping stones. At greater distances, few distance benchmarks are…
Remote-sensing observations of Solar System objects with a space telescope offer a key method of understanding celestial bodies and contributing to planetary formation and evolution theories. The capabilities of Twinkle, a space telescope…
Nearby masses can have a high probability of lensing stars in a distant background field. High-probability lensing, or mesolensing, can therefore be used to dramatically increase our knowledge of dark and dim objects in the solar…
Abell 2218 is one of a handful of clusters in which X-ray and lensing analyses of the cluster mass are in strong disagreement. It is also a system for which X-ray data and radio measurements of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich decrement have been…
The total mass of a galaxy cluster is one of its most fundamental properties. Together with the redshift, the mass links observation and theory, allowing us to use the cluster population to test models of structure formation and to…
Galaxies and clusters embedded in the large-scale structure of the Universe are observed to align in preferential directions. Galaxy alignment has been established as a potential probe for cosmological information, but the application of…
We analyze the properties of searches devoted to finding planetary transits by observing simple stellar systems, such as globular clusters, open clusters, and the Galactic bulge. We develop the analytic tools necessary to predict the number…
A promising route for revealing the existence of dark matter structures on mass scales smaller than the faintest galaxies is through their effect on strong gravitational lenses. We examine the role of local, lens-proximate clustering in…
I show that the most common method of quantifying the likelihood that an extreme galaxy cluster could exist is biased and can result in false claims of tension with LambdaCDM. This common method uses the probability that at least one…
The serendipitous detection of stellar occultations by Outer Solar System objects is a powerful method for ascertaining the small end ($r \lesssim 15$ km) of the size distribution of Kuiper Belt Objects and may potentially allow the…
Clusters of galaxies are important targets in observationally cosmology, as they can be used both to study the evolution of the galaxies themselves and to constrain cosmological parameters. Here we report on the first results of a major…