相关论文: The curiously warped mean plane of the Kuiper belt
We study the warping and tearing of a geometrically thin, non-self-gravitating disk surrounding binary supermassive black holes on an eccentric orbit. The circumbinary disk is significantly misaligned with the binary orbital plane, and is…
We present the secular theory of coplanar $N$-planet system, in the absence of mean motion resonances between the planets. This theory relies on the averaging of a perturbation to the two-body problem over the mean longitudes. We expand the…
Second-order mean-motion resonances lead to an interesting phenomenon in the sculpting of the period ratio distribution due to their shape and width in period-ratio/eccentricity space. As the osculating periods librate in resonance, the…
This work explores the orbital distribution of minor bodies in the outer Solar System emplaced as a result of a Nice model migration from the simulations of Brasser & Morbidelli (2013). This planetary migration scatters a planetesimal disk…
Although most of the circumbinary planets detected by the Kepler spacecraft are on orbits that are closely aligned with the binary orbital plane, the systems Kepler-413 and Kepler-453 exhibit small misalignments of $\sim 2.5^\circ$. One…
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…
The six-degree obliquity of the sun suggests that either an asymmetry was present in the solar system's formation environment, or an external torque has misaligned the angular momentum vectors of the sun and the planets. However, the exact…
The size distribution and total mass of objects in the Oort Cloud have important implications to the theory of planets formation, including the properties of, and the processes taking place in the early solar system. We discuss the…
The discovery of Sedna places new constraints on the origin and evolution of our solar system. Here we investigate the possibility that a close encounter with another star produced the observed edge of the Kuiper belt, at roughly 50 AU, and…
The densities of mid-sized Kuiper belt objects are a key constraint into understanding the assembly of objects in the outer solar system. These objects are critical for understanding the currently unexplained transition from the smallest…
The size distribution is determined directly from the current known Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs). We found that there is a peak for the size distribution around 230 km in diameter. For the objects larger than 230 km, the KBOs populate as…
Knowledge of the Kuiper Belt is currently limited to those objects that can be detected directly. Objects with diameters less than $\sim$10km reflect too little light to be detected. These smaller bodies could contain most of the mass in…
We present the results of a wide-field survey using the 1.2-m Samuel Oschin Telescope at Palomar Observatory. This survey was designed to find the most distant members of the Kuiper belt and beyond. We searched ~12,000 deg2 down to a mean…
Extreme-scale alignment of quasar optical polarization vectors at cosmological scales ($z\le 2$) is also characterized by the rotation of mean position angle $\chi$ with $\Delta \chi \approx 30^{\circ}$ per 1 Gpc. For observing interval of…
The plausibility of an unseen planet in the outer solar system, and the expected orbit and mass of such a planet, have long been a topic of inquiry and debate. We calculate the long-term orbital stability of distant TNOs, which allows us to…
The angle $\psi$ between a planet's orbital axis and the spin axis of its parent star is an important diagnostic of planet formation, migration, and tidal evolution. We seek empirical constraints on $\psi$ by measuring the stellar…
We study the secular evolution of a particle in deep mean motion resonance (MMR) with a planet in the planar elliptic restricted three body problem. We do not consider any restriction neither in the planet's eccentricity $e_p$ nor in the…
A group of newly observed extreme trans-Neptunian objects exhibit unexpected orbital confinement, characterized by the alignment of orbital angular momentum vectors and apsidal lines. It is proposed that an undiscovered giant planet, named…
The formation of the largest objects in the Kuiper belt, with measured densities of ~1.5 g cm-3 and higher, from the coagulation of small bodies, with measured densities below 1 g cm-3 is difficult to explain without invoking significant…
We derive the stellar rotation curve of the Galaxy in the range of Galactocentric radii of R=4-16 kpc at different vertical heights from the Galactic plane of z between -2 and +2 kpc. We used the PPMXL survey, which contains the USNO-B1…