Related papers: On the Secular Behavior of Irregular Satellites
There is an increasing number of recent observational results which show that some globular clusters exhibit internal rotation while they travel along their orbital trajectories around the Milky Way center. Based on these findings, we…
We analyze the angular distribution and the orbital rotation directions of a sample of carefully-selected satellite galaxies extracted from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We also study these statistics in an N-body simulation of…
It is widely recognized that the irregular satellites of the giant planets were captured from initially heliocentric orbits. However, the mechanism of capture and the source region from which they were captured both remain unknown. We…
We describe the long-term evolution of compact systems of terrestrial planets, using a set of simulations that match the statistical properties of the observed exoplanet distribution. The evolution is driven by tidal dissipation in the…
In this paper, a new parametrization of the relative motion between two satellites orbiting a central body is presented. The parametrization is based on the nodal elements: a set of angles describing the orbit geometry with respect to the…
Numerical integrations of the Solar System reveal a remarkable stability of the orbits of the inner planets over billions of years, in spite of their chaotic variations characterized by a Lyapunov time of only 5 million years and the lack…
Eccentricity of binary systems is not a gauge invariant quantity, but has an important impact on the observed gravitational wave signal of such systems, generating power in all possible harmonics of the orbital period. We here clarify the…
Classical secular theory can be a powerful tool to describe the qualitative character of multi-planet systems and offer insight into their histories. The eigenmodes of the secular behavior, rather than current orbital elements, can help…
The most puzzling property of the extrasolar planets discovered by recent radial velocity surveys is their high orbital eccentricities, which are very difficult to explain within our current theoretical paradigm for planet formation.…
In this paper, two models of interest for Celestial Mechanics are presented and analysed, using both analytic and numerical techniques, from the point of view of the possible presence of regular and/or chaotic motion, as well as the…
The Kepler Mission has detected dozens of compact planetary systems with more than four transiting planets. This sample provides a collection of close-packed planetary systems with relatively little spread in the inclination angles of the…
Close-in planetary systems detected by the Kepler mission present an excess of periods ratio that are just slightly larger than some low order resonant values. This feature occurs naturally when resonant couples undergo dissipation that…
We reexamine the popular belief that a telluric planet or satellite on an eccentric orbit can, outside a spin-orbit resonance, be captured in a quasi-static tidal equilibrium called pseudosynchronous rotation. The existence of such…
I consider the dynamics of mean motion resonances between pairs of co-planar planets and derive a new integrable Hamiltonian model for planets' resonant motion. The new model generalizes previously-derived integrable Hamiltonians for…
We investigate the secular resonances for massless small bodies and Earth-like planets in several planetary systems. We further compare the results with those of Solar System. For example, in the GJ 876 planetary system, we show that the…
We are analyzing a sample of closeby galaxy systems, each comprising a bright isolated spiral and its satellites. We find an excess (56%) of prograde satellites over retrograde, which basically holds for all angular displacements from the…
Triple body systems are prevalent in nature, from planetary to stellar to supermassive black hole scales. In a hierarchical triple system, oscillations of the inner orbit's eccentricity and inclination can be induced on secular timescales.…
It is well known that a large fraction of galaxies have cuspy luminosity profiles in their central regions, at least within the observational resolution. In such cases, the often used, simplified, local approximation for the dynamical…
The quasi-satellite (QS) phenomenon makes two celestial bodies to fly near each other (Mikkola et al. 2006) and that effect can be used also to make artificial satellites move in tandem. We consider formation flight of two or three…
We study the scattering resonances between two confocal hyperbolae and show that the spectrum is dominated by the effect of a single periodic orbit. There are two distinct cases depending on whether the orbit is geometric or diffractive. A…