Related papers: First Constraints on Rings in the Pluto System
(Abridged) The trajectory of Saturn is nowadays known at essentially the same accuracy level of the inner planets due to the telemetry of the Cassini spacecraft. Thus, the expected perturbations $\dot\varpi,~\dot\Omega$ due to PX, for which…
The Phoebe ring, Saturn's largest and faintest ring, lies far beyond the planet's well-known main rings. It is primarily sourced by collisions with Saturn's largest irregular satellite Phoebe, perhaps through stochastic macroscopic…
With the MIPS camera on Spitzer, we have searched for far-infrared emission from dust in the planetary system orbiting pulsar PSR 1257+12. With accuracies of 0.05 mJy at 24 um and 1.5 mJy at 70 um, photometric measurements find no evidence…
We extend previous results showing that the surfaces of Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt objects are not primordial and have been moderately to heavily reworked by collisions. Objects smaller than about $r = 2.5$ km have collisional disruption…
A new asteroid rotation period survey have been carried out by using the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF). Twelve consecutive PTF fields, which covered an area of 87 deg$^2$ in the ecliptic plane, were observed in $R$ band with a cadence of…
We analytically work out the long-term variations caused on the motion of a planet orbiting a star by a very distant, pointlike massive object X. Apart from the semi-major axis a, all the other Keplerian osculating orbital elements…
The liquid water habitable zone (HZ) describes the orbital distance at which a terrestrial planet can maintain above-freezing conditions through regulation by the carbonate-silicate cycle. Recent calculations have suggested that planets in…
Recent ALMA observations have revealed that a large fraction of protoplanetary discs contain bright rings at (sub)millimeter wavelengths. Dust trapping induced by pressure maxima in the gas disc is a popular explanation for these rings.…
Theories of the formation and early evolution of planetary systems postulate that planets are born in circumstellar disks, and undergo radial migration during and after dissipation of the dust and gas disk from which they formed. The…
All the four giant planets in our Solar System have rings, but their characteristics are very different. The rings consist of a number of small particles, although individual particles have not been directly imaged. Near the central planet,…
The Pluto system is an archetype for the multitude of icy dwarf planets and accompanying satellite systems that populate the vast volume of the solar system beyond Neptune. New Horizons' exploration of Pluto and its five moons gave us a…
Predicting the rate of escape and thermal structure of Pluto's upper atmosphere in preparation for the New Horizons Spacecraft encounter in 2015 is important for planning and interpreting the expected measurements. Having a moderate Jeans…
The surprising discovery of a ring system around the Centaur 10199 Chariklo in 2013 led to a reanalysis of archival stellar occultation data for the Centaur 2060 Chiron by Ortiz et al. One possible interpretation of that data is that a…
The hypothesis of a recent origin of Saturn's rings and its mid-sized moons is actively debated. It was suggested that a proto-Rhea and a proto-Dione might have collided recently, giving birth to the modern system of mid-sized moons. It is…
Saturns F-ring is a unique, narrow ring that lies (radially) close to the tidally disruptive Roche limit of water ice for Saturn. Significant work has been done that shows it to be one of the most dynamic places in the Solar System.…
Particles of various sizes can exist around Mars. The orbits of large particles are mainly governed by Martian gravity, while those of small particles could be significantly affected by non-gravitational forces. Many of the previous studies…
Ring systems have been observed around Centaur Chariklo (10199) and other small bodies but their origin and dynamical histories are still debated. These small body ring systems challenge conventional models for the origin of planetary…
Small-scale waves were observed along the boundary between Jupiter's North Equatorial Belt and North Tropical Zone, ~16.5{\deg} N planetographic latitude in Hubble Space Telescope data in 2012 and throughout 2015 to 2018, observable at all…
Narrow planetary rings are eccentric and inclined. Particles within a given ring must therefore share the same pericenter and node. We solve for the three-dimensional geometries and mass distributions that enable the Uranian Alpha and Beta…
Context. Circumstellar disks are known to contain a significant mass in dust ranging from micron to centimeter size. Meteorites are evidence that individual grains of those sizes were collected and assembled into planetesimals in the young…