Related papers: Evidence for an extended scattered disk

The outer giant planets, Uranus and Neptune, pose a challenge to theories of planet formation. They exist in a region of the Solar System where long dynamical timescales and a low primordial density of material would have conspired to make…

From two observing runs during the 2014 summer at Calar Alto Observatory in Almer\'ia (Spain) and at Sierra Nevada Observatory in Granada (Spain), we were able to derive CCD photometry of the Trans-Neptunian Object 2008 OG$_{19}$. We…

Doppler spectroscopy has detected 136 planets around nearby stars. A major puzzle is why their orbits are highly eccentric, while all planets in our Solar System are on nearly circular orbits, as expected if they formed by accretion…

We have performed a detailed dynamical study of the recently identified Neptunian Trojan 2004 KV18, only the second object to be discovered librating around Neptune's trailing Lagrange point, L5. We find that 2004 KV18 is moving on a highly…

We have conducted an angular differential imaging survey with NIRC2 at Keck in search of close-in substellar companions to a sample of seven systems with confirmed planetary-mass companions (PMCs) on wide orbits (>50 AU). These…

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 orbital distribution of trans-Neptunian objects provides strong evidence for the radial migration of Neptune. The outer planets' orbits are thought to have become unstable during the early stages with Jupiter having scattering…

The discovery and characteristics of transneptunian binaries are reviewed. In the 20 years since their first discovery, a wealth of detail has emerged including the frequency of binaries in different populations, their relative sizes and…

Some large trans-Neptunian objects could be formed by the compression of rarefied dust condensations, but not by the accumulation of smaller planetesimals. A considerable portion of near-Earth objects could have come from the…

Recent observations have confirmed the existence of rings around minor bodies in the outer Solar System. These objects may possess satellites as well. Here we analytically investigate the interaction between such rings and satellites. We…

The most distant known trans-Neptunian objects (perihelion distance above 38 au and semimajor axis above 150 au) are of interest for their potential to reveal past, external, or present but unseen perturbers. Realizing this potential…

The distribution of the orbital elements of the known extreme trans-Neptunian objects or ETNOs has been found to be statistically incompatible with that of an unperturbed asteroid population following heliocentric or, better, barycentric…

Three-dimensional hydrodynamic numerical simulations have demonstrated that the structure of a protoplanetary disc may be strongly affected by a planet orbiting in a plane that is misaligned to the disc. When the planet is able to open a…

We integrated the orbital evolution of 30,000 Jupiter-family comets, 1300 resonant asteroids, and 7000 asteroidal, trans-Neptunian, and cometary dust particles. For initial orbital elements of bodies close to those of Comets 2P, 10P, 44P,…

The Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) exhibit an orbital clustering of the outer planets lying at perihelion distances larger than Neptune and semimajor axes greater than 150 AU from the Sun. This implies a hitherto unknown dynamical mechanism to…

A number of intriguing patterns have been identified in the distributions of the orbital elements of the known extreme trans-Neptunian objects or ETNOs --those with semimajor axis greater than 150 au and perihelion distance greater than 30…

The discovery of Jupiter-mass planets in close orbits about their parent stars has challenged models of planet formation. Recent observations have shown that a number of these planets have highly inclined, sometimes retrograde orbits about…

The Kuiper belt is a population of icy bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. A particularly puzzling and up-to-now unexplained feature of the Kuiper belt is the so-called `kernel', a concentration of orbits with semimajor axes a~44 AU,…

The Kuiper belt includes tens of thousands of large bodies and millions of smaller objects. The main part of the belt objects is located in the annular zone between 39.4 au and 47.8 au from the Sun, the boundaries correspond to the average…

Previous studies of cometary impacts in the outer Solar System used the spatial distribution of ecliptic comets (ECs) from dynamical models that assumed ECs began on low-inclination orbits (<5 deg) in the Kuiper belt. In reality, the source…