Related papers: Stellar encounters as the origin of distant solar …
The most distant Kuiper belt objects appear to be clustered in longitude of perihelion and in orbital pole position. To date, the only two suggestions for the cause of these apparent clusterings have been either the effects of observational…
By telescopic tracking, we have established that the orbit of the trans-neptunian object (2000 CR$_{105}$) has a perihelion of $\simeq$44 AU, and is thus outside the domain controlled by strong gravitational close encounters with Neptune.…
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 investigate the prospects for the capture of the proposed Planet 9 from other stars in the Sun's birth cluster. Any capture scenario must satisfy three conditions: the encounter must be more distant than ~150 au to avoid perturbing the…
Most observed extrasolar planets have masses similar to, but orbits very different from, the gas giants of our solar system. Many are much closer to their parent stars than would have been expected and their orbits are often rather…
This paper reviews coagulation models for planet formation in the Kuiper Belt, emphasizing links to recent observations of our and other solar systems. At heliocentric distances of 35-50 AU, single annulus and multiannulus planetesimal…
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…
Most known trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) gravitationally scattering off the giant planets have orbital inclinations consistent with an origin from the classical Kuiper belt, but a small fraction of these "scattering TNOs" have inclinations…
The Capture Theory gives planet production through a tidal interaction between a condensed star and a diffuse protostar within a dense embedded cluster. Initial extensive and highly eccentric planetary orbits round-off and decay in a…
The population of the Kuiper Belt within 50 AU of the Sun has likely been severely depleted by gravitational perturbations from the giant planets, particularly Neptune. The density of Kuiper Belt objects is expected to be two orders of…
The orbits of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) can indicate the existence of an undiscovered planet in the outer solar system. Here, we used N-body computer simulations to investigate the effects of a hypothetical Kuiper Belt planet (KBP) on…
The small bodies in the Kuiper Belt region of the distant Solar System are leftovers from planet formation. Their orbital distribution today tells us about how giant planets migrated, while their surface properties, shapes, and sizes tell…
The trans-Neptunian region of the solar system exhibits an intricate dynamical structure, much of which can be explained by an instability-driven orbital history of the giant planets. However, the origins of a highly inclined, and in…
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 presence of an unseen `Planet 9' on the outskirts of the Solar system has been invoked to explain the unexpected clustering of the orbits of several Edgeworth--Kuiper Belt Objects. We use $N$-body simulations to investigate the…
In most extrasolar planetary systems, the present orbits of known giant planets admit the existence of stable terrestrial planets. Those same giant planets, however, have typically eccentric orbits that hint at violent early dynamics less…
We present the results of a wide-field survey using the 1.2-m Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory. This survey was designed to find the most distant members of the Kuiper belt and beyond. We searched ~12,000 deg2 down to a mean…
Recent numerical simulations have demonstrated that the Sun's dynamical history within the Milky Way may be much more complex than that suggested by its current low peculiar velocity. In particular, the Sun may have radially migrated…
We have detected a 12 M$_{\rm Jup}$ planet orbiting in or near the habitable zone of a main-sequence A star via the pulsational phase shifts induced by orbital motion. The planet has an orbital period of $840\pm20$ d and an eccentricity of…
Outer satellites of the planets have distant, eccentric orbits that can be highly inclined or even retrograde relative to the equatorial planes of their planets. These irregular orbits cannot have formed by circumplanetary accretion and are…