Related papers: Upsilon Andromedae: A Rosetta Stone in Planetary D…
The star upsilon Andromeda is orbited by three known planets, the innermost of which has an orbital period of 4.617 days and a mass at least 0.69 that of Jupiter. This planet is close enough to its host star that the radiation it absorbs…
The upsilon Andromedae system was the first multi-planet system discovered orbiting a main sequence star. We describe the detection of water vapor in the atmosphere of the innermost non-transiting gas giant ups~And~b by treating the…
The known extrasolar planets exhibit many interesting and surprising features--extremely short-period orbits, high-eccentricity orbits, mean-motion and secular resonances, etc.--and have dramatically expanded our appreciation of the…
Since exoplanets were detected using the radial velocity method, they have revealed a diverse distribution of orbital configurations. Amongst these are planets in highly eccentric orbits (e > 0.5). Most of these systems consist of a single…
This chapter concerns the long-term dynamical evolution of planetary systems from both theoretical and observational perspectives. We begin by discussing the planet-planet interactions that take place within our own Solar System. We then…
For centuries, our knowledge of planetary systems and ideas about planet formation were based on a single example, our solar system. During the last thirteen years, the discovery of ~170 planetary systems has ushered in a new era for…
The apparent regularity of the motion of the giant planets of our solar system suggested for decades that said planets formed onto orbits similar to the current ones and that nothing dramatic ever happened during their lifetime. The…
Since very recently, we acquired knowledge on the existence of comets in extrasolar planetary systems. The formation of comets together with planets around host stars now seems evident. As stars are often born in clusters of interstellar…
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…
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…
Exoplanet surveys have confirmed one of humanity's (and all teenagers') worst fears: we are weird. If our Solar System were observed with present-day Earth technology -- to put our system and exoplanets on the same footing -- Jupiter is the…
Motivated by the large number of compact extrasolar planetary systems discovered by the Kepler Mission, this paper considers perturbations due to possible additional outer planets. The discovered compact systems sometimes contain multiple…
Instabilities and strong dynamical interactions between multiple giant planets have been proposed as a possible explanation for the surprising orbital properties of extrasolar planetary systems. In particular, dynamical instabilities seem…
Exoplanets are often found with short periods or high eccentricities, and multiple-planet systems are often in resonance. They require dynamical theories that describe more extreme motions than those of the relatively placid planetary…
The hundreds of exoplanets that have been discovered in the past two decades offer a new perspective on planetary structure. Instead of being the archetypal examples of planets, those of our Solar System are merely possible outcomes of…
More than 100 extrasolar planets have been discovered since 1990s. Different from the solar system, these planets' orbital eccentricities cover a huge range from 0 to 0.7. Incidently, the first Kuiper Belt Object was discovered in 1992.…
We present results of extensive numerical studies of the stability of non-interacting particles in the planetary systems of stars Upsilon Andromedae, GJ 876, 47 UMa, and 55 Cancri. We discuss the possibility of the existence of islands of…
We show that terrestrial planets could survive in variously restricted regions of the habitable zones of 47 Ursae Majoris, Epsilon Eridani, and Rho Coronae Borealis, but nowhere in the habitable zones of Gliese 876 and Upsilon Andromedae.…
This article relates two topics of central importance in modern astronomy - the discovery some fifteen years ago of the first planets around other stars (exoplanets), and the centuries-old problem of understanding the origin of our own…
This paper studies the effects of dynamical interactions among the planets in observed extrasolar planetary systems, including hypothetical additional bodies, with a focus on secular perturbations. These interactions cause the…