Related papers: NICMOS Imaging of Candidate Extra-Solar Planetary …
The ultra-high contrast capability required to form images of other solar systems is arguably the highest-profile challenge in astronomy today. The current high-contrast imaging efforts all require background subtraction to separate the…
The dynamics of the inner regions of young stellar objects (YSOs) is driven by a variety of physical phenomena, from magnetospheres and accretion to the dust sublimation rim and inner disk flows. These inner environments evolve on…
Direct imaging surveys for exoplanets commonly exclude binary stars from their target lists, leaving a large part of the overall planet demography unexplored. To address this gap in our understanding of planet formation and evolution, we…
This paper discusses the impact of introducing a planet on an eccentric orbit into a planetesimal disk. That planet's secular perturbations cause the orbits of the planetesimals to evolve in such a way that at any one time planetesimals at…
We report a new and complete model of the beta Pictoris disk, which succeeds in accounting for both the surface brightness distribution, warp characteristics, the outer ``butterfly'' asymmetry as observed by HST/STIS in scattered light, as…
Direct imaging and spectroscopy is the likely means by which we will someday identify, confirm, and characterize an Earth-like planet around a nearby Sun-like star. This Chapter summarizes the current state of knowledge regarding…
Numerical modeling of the interaction of giant planets and the planetesimal disk was carried out for the Nice model, in which the initial orbits of the planets are in resonant configurations. In addition to the standard Nice model,…
We study the collisional evolution of km-sized planetesimals in tight binary star systems to investigate whether accretion towards protoplanets can proceed despite the strong gravitational perturbations from the secondary star. The orbits…
Debris belts on the periphery of planetary systems, encompassing the region occupied by planetary orbits, are massive analogues of the Solar system's Kuiper belt. They are detected by thermal emission of dust released in collisions amongst…
While ALMA and JWST are revolutionizing our view of star and planet formation with their unprecedented sensitivity and resolution at submillimeter and near-IR wavelengths, many outstanding questions can only be answered with observations in…
Interest among astronomers in the detection of extra-solar planets is accelerating with the growing realization that it may soon be technically feasible. The ongoing renaissance in telescope construction and the anticipated launches of new…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), currently scheduled to launch in 2021, will dramatically advance our understanding of exoplanetary systems with its ability to directly image and characterise planetary-mass companions at wide…
Exoplanets are organized in a broad array of orbital configurations that reflect their formation along with billions of years of dynamical processing through gravitational interactions. This history is encoded in the angular momentum…
We use published optical spectral and IR excess data from nine young clusters and associations to study the stellar mass dependent dispersal of circumstellar disks. All clusters older than ~3 Myr show a decrease in disk fraction with…
The study of our Solar System -- its formation, evolution, and long-term stability -- has been ongoing for centuries and is now a standard part of scientific education. While the formation of other Solar-like exoplanetary systems is…
Among the extrasolar planetary systems about 30 are located in a stellar binary orbiting one of the stars, preferably the more massive primary. The dynamical influence of the second companion alters firstly the orbital elements of the…
Most extrasolar planets are observed to have eccentricities much larger than those in the solar system. Some of these planets have sibling planets, with comparable masses, orbiting around the same host stars. In these multiple planetary…
With more than 260 extrasolar planetary systems discovered to-date, the search for habitable planets has found new grounds. Unlike our solar system, the stars of many of these planets are hosts to eccentric or close-in giant bodies. Several…
Debris discs are commonly detected orbiting main-sequence stars, yet little is known regarding their fate as the star evolves to become a giant. Recent observations of radial velocity detected planets orbiting giant stars highlight this…
We present high-spatial resolution HST and adaptive optics observations, and high-sensitivity ISO (ISOCAM & ISOPHOT) observations of a sample of X-ray selected weak-line (WTTS) and post (PTTS) T Tauri stars located in the nearby Chamaeleon…