Related papers: Accretion in the Early Outer Solar System
A measurement by microlensing of the planetary mass function of planets with masses ranging from 5M_E to 10M_J and orbital radii from 0.5 to 10 AU was reported recently. A strategy for extending the mass range down to (1-3)M_E is proposed…
Motivated by recent measurements of the free-floating planet mass function at terrestrial masses, we consider the possibility that the solar system may have captured a terrestrial planet early in its history. We show that $\sim 1.2$…
We develop an idealized dynamical model to predict the typical properties of outer extrasolar planetary systems, at radii beyond 5 AU. Our hypothesis is that dynamical evolution in outer planetary systems is controlled by a combination of…
Observations indicate that the gaseous circumstellar disks around young stars vary significantly in size, ranging from tens to thousands of AU. Models of planet formation depend critically upon the properties of these primordial disks, yet…
Since the first detection of intracluster planetary nebulae in 1996, imaging and spectroscopic surveys identified such stars to trace the radial extent and the kinematics of diffuse light in clusters. This topic of research is tightly…
Planetary nebulae are formed by the matter ejected by low-to-intermediate mass stars (~0.8-8 times the mass of the Sun) towards the end of their lives. As hydrogen and then helium fuel sources run out, stars expand. During these giant…
Batygin and Brown (2016) have suggested the existence of a new Solar System planet supposed to be responsible for the perturbation of eccentric orbits of small outer bodies. The main challenge is now to detect and characterize this putative…
We model the early stages of planet formation in the Solar System, including continual planetesimal formation, and planetesimal and pebble accretion onto planetary embryos in an evolving disk driven by a disk wind. The aim is to constrain…
The orbits of small bodies in the outer solar system are particularly sensitive to gravitational perturbations, including stellar flybys. Stellar clusters, with low velocity dispersions and high number densities, can be the source of strong…
The nebular evolution is followed from the vicinity of the asymptotic-giant branch across the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram until the white-dwarf domain is reached, using various central-star models coupled to different initial envelope…
This paper discusses the location of a sample of planetary nebulae on the HR diagram. We determine the internal velocity fields of 14 planetary nebulae from high-resolution echelle spectroscopy, with the help of photoionization models. The…
The recent development of a new minimum mass solar nebula, under the assumption that the giant planets formed in the compact configuration of the Nice model, has shed new light on planet formation in the solar system. Desch previously found…
Among the outer solar system minor planet orbits there is an observed gap in perihelion between roughly 50 and 65 au at eccentricities $e\gtrsim0.65$. Through a suite of observational simulations, we show that the gap arises from two…
Unlike the Solar System planets, thousands of smaller bodies beyond Neptune orbit the Sun on eccentric ($e >$ 0.1) and ($i>$ 3$^\circ$) orbits. While migration of the giant planets during the early stages of Solar System evolution can…
This paper reviews the theory of protostellar debris disks. After a brief introduction to accretion disk physics, I describe coagulation models of planet formation in the outer regions of planetesimal disks. Coagulation models for the…
Planetary Nebulae (PNe) are very important kinematical tracers of the outer regions of early-type galaxies, where the integrated light techniques fail. Under ad hoc assumptions, they allow measurements of rotation velocity and velocity…
The Planetary Nebula Spectrograph is a dedicated instrument for measuring radial velocity of individual Planetary Nebulae (PNe) in galaxies. This new instrument is providing crucial data with which to probe the structure of dark halos in…
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 Kuiper belt includes tens of thousands of large bodies and millions of smaller objects. The main part of the belt objects is located in the annular zone between 39.4 au and 47.8 au from the Sun, the boundaries correspond to the average…
The most pristine remnants of the Solar system's planet formation epoch orbit the Sun beyond Neptune, the small bodies of the trans-Neptunian object populations. The bulk of the mass is in ~100 km objects, but objects at smaller sizes have…