Related papers: Predictions for a planet just inside Fomalhaut's e…
Recent observations of exoplanets by direct imaging, reveal that giant planets orbit at a few dozens to more than a hundred of AU from their central star. The question of the origin of these planets challenges the standard theories of…
We present a new analytic approach to the disk-planet interaction that is especially useful for planets with eccentricity larger than the disk aspect ratio. We make use of the dynamical friction formula to calculate the force exerted on the…
The conditions that a planet must fulfill to be habitable are not precisely known. However, it is comparatively easier to define conditions under which a planet is very likely not habitable. Finding such conditions is important as it can…
Radial drift of solid particles in the protoplanetary disk is often invoked as a threat to planet formation, as it removes solid material from the disk before it can be assembled into planets. However, it may also concentrate solids at…
A key challenge in debris-disc science is that we do not know the masses of debris discs, nor the sizes of the largest debris bodies. This is because modern observations can only detect objects up to centimetre sizes, whilst larger…
We assess the ability of a solid ring to model a global perturbation induced by several thousands of main-belt asteroids. The ring is first studied in an analytical framework that provides an estimate of all the ring's parameters excepting…
Discs of gas and dust are ubiquitous around protostars. Hypothetical disc viscosity is thought to cause the gas and dust to accrete onto the star. Turbulence within the disc might be the source of this disc viscosity. However, observed…
We present the results of a new HI, optical, and H-alpha interferometric study of the nearby spiral galaxy NGC 157. Our combined C- and D-array observations with the VLA show a large-scale, ring-like structure in the neutral hydrogen…
The apparent detection of an exoplanet orbiting Fomalhaut was announced in 2008. However, subsequent observations of Fomalhaut b raised questions about its status: Unlike other exoplanets, it is bright in the optical and nondetected in the…
The eccentricity of a planet's orbit and the inclination of its orbital plane encode important information about its formation and history. However, exoplanets detected via direct-imaging are often only observed over a very small fraction…
Many exoplanets have been discovered with radii of 1-4 Earth radii, between that of Earth and Neptune. A number of these are known to have densities consistent with solid compositions, while others are "sub-Neptunes" likely to have…
We study the orbital evolution and mass growth of protoplanets with masses $M \in [0.1-8]$~M$_\oplus$ in the vicinity of a dusty ring, using three-dimensional numerical simulations with a two-fluid model and nested-meshes. We find two…
Observations of line emission from water masers near the center of the galaxy NGC 4258 have recently provided compelling evidence for rotating disk of gas, viewed nearly edge-on, surrounding a massive black hole (Miyoshi etal. 1995). We…
Voyager images and Cassini occultation data have previously shown that the behavior of the outer edge of Saturn's massive B ring is determined only in part by a static response to the 2:1 inner Lindblad resonance with Mimas. In Cassini…
We present the results of high resolution 2D simulations of low mass planets on fixed eccentric orbits embedded in protoplanetary discs. The aim of this study is to determine how the strength of the sustained, non-linear corotation torque…
We fit an isothermal oscillatory density model of Saturn's protoplanetary disk to the present-day major satellites and innermost rings D/C and we determine the radial scale length of the disk, the equation of state and the central density…
We continue the study of time-like geodesic dynamics in exact static, axially and reflection symmetric space-times describing the fields of a Schwarzschild black hole surrounded by thin discs or rings. In the first paper of this series, the…
We have imaged the circumstellar disk of Fomalhaut at 350 microns wavelength, using SHARC II at the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory. The spatial resolution of the raw images (9 arcsec) has been enhanced by a factor of three using the…
We have searched for and estimated the possible gravitational influence of dark matter in the Solar system based on the EPM2011 planetary ephemerides using about 677 thousand positional observations of planets and spacecraft. Most of the…
Celestial bodies approximated with rigid triaxial ellipsoids in a two-body system can rotate chaotically due to the time-varying gravitational torque from the central mass. At small orbital eccentricity values, rotation is short-term…