Dynamics of the Kuiper Belt
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The Dynamics of Plutinos
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by CERN Document Server The dynamics of Plutinos Qingjuan Yu and Scott Tremaine Princeton University Observatory, Peyton Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544-1001, USA ABSTRACT Plutinos are Kuiper-belt objects that share the 3:2 Neptune resonance with Pluto. The long-term stability of Plutino orbits depends on their eccentric- ity. Plutinos with eccentricities close to Pluto (fractional eccentricity difference < ∆e=ep = e ep =ep 0:1) can be stable because the longitude difference librates, | − | ∼ in a manner similar to the tadpole and horseshoe libration in coorbital satellites. > Plutinos with ∆e=ep 0:3 can also be stable; the longitude difference circulates ∼ and close encounters are possible, but the effects of Pluto are weak because the encounter velocity is high. Orbits with intermediate eccentricity differences are likely to be unstable over the age of the solar system, in the sense that encoun- ters with Pluto drive them out of the 3:2 Neptune resonance and thus into close encounters with Neptune. This mechanism may be a source of Jupiter-family comets. Subject headings: planets and satellites: Pluto — Kuiper Belt, Oort cloud — celestial mechanics, stellar dynamics 1. Introduction The orbit of Pluto has a number of unusual features. It has the highest eccentricity (ep =0:253) and inclination (ip =17:1◦) of any planet in the solar system. It crosses Neptune’s orbit and hence is susceptible to strong perturbations during close encounters with that planet. However, close encounters do not occur because Pluto is locked into a 3:2 orbital resonance with Neptune, which ensures that conjunctions occur near Pluto’s aphelion (Cohen & Hubbard 1965). -
Astro2020 Science White Paper Modeling Debris Disk Evolution
Astro2020 Science White Paper Modeling Debris Disk Evolution Thematic Areas Planetary Systems Formation and Evolution of Compact Objects Star and Planet Formation Cosmology and Fundamental Physics Galaxy Evolution Resolved Stellar Populations and their Environments Stars and Stellar Evolution Multi-Messenger Astronomy and Astrophysics Principal Author András Gáspár Steward Observatory, The University of Arizona [email protected] 1-(520)-621-1797 Co-Authors Dániel Apai, Jean-Charles Augereau, Nicholas P. Ballering, Charles A. Beichman, Anthony Boc- caletti, Mark Booth, Brendan P. Bowler, Geoffrey Bryden, Christine H. Chen, Thayne Currie, William C. Danchi, John Debes, Denis Defrère, Steve Ertel, Alan P. Jackson, Paul G. Kalas, Grant M. Kennedy, Matthew A. Kenworthy, Jinyoung Serena Kim, Florian Kirchschlager, Quentin Kral, Sebastiaan Krijt, Alexander V. Krivov, Marc J. Kuchner, Jarron M. Leisenring, Torsten Löhne, Wladimir Lyra, Meredith A. MacGregor, Luca Matrà, Dimitri Mawet, Bertrand Mennes- son, Tiffany Meshkat, Amaya Moro-Martín, Erika R. Nesvold, George H. Rieke, Aki Roberge, Glenn Schneider, Andrew Shannon, Christopher C. Stark, Kate Y. L. Su, Philippe Thébault, David J. Wilner, Mark C. Wyatt, Marie Ygouf, Andrew N. Youdin Co-Signers Virginie Faramaz, Kevin Flaherty, Hannah Jang-Condell, Jérémy Lebreton, Sebastián Marino, Jonathan P. Marshall, Rafael Millan-Gabet, Peter Plavchan, Luisa M. Rebull, Jacob White Abstract Understanding the formation, evolution, diversity, and architectures of planetary systems requires detailed knowledge of all of their components. The past decade has shown a remarkable increase in the number of known exoplanets and debris disks, i.e., populations of circumstellar planetes- imals and dust roughly analogous to our solar system’s Kuiper belt, asteroid belt, and zodiacal dust. -
Unseen 'Planetary Mass Object' Signalled by Warped Kuiper Belt 22 June 2017, by Daniel Stolte
Unseen 'planetary mass object' signalled by warped Kuiper Belt 22 June 2017, by Daniel Stolte orbital tilts (inclinations) that average out to what planetary scientists call the invariable plane of the solar system, the most distant of the Kuiper Belt's objects do not. Their average plane, Volk and Malhotra discovered, is tilted away from the invariable plane by about eight degrees. In other words, something unknown is warping the average orbital plane of the outer solar system. "The most likely explanation for our results is that there is some unseen mass," says Volk, a postdoctoral fellow at LPL and the lead author of the study. "According to our calculations, something A yet to be discovered, unseen "planetary mass object" as massive as Mars would be needed to cause the makes its existence known by ruffling the orbital plane of warp that we measured." distant Kuiper Belt objects, according to research by Kat Volk and Renu Malhotra of the UA's Lunar and Planetary The Kuiper Belt lies beyond the orbit of Neptune Laboratory. The object is pictured on a wide orbit far and extends to a few hundred Astronomical Units, beyond Pluto in this artist's illustration. Credit: Heather or AU, with one AU representing the distance Roper/LPL between Earth and the sun. Like its inner solar system cousin, the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, the Kuiper Belt hosts a vast number of minor planets, mostly small icy bodies (the An unknown, unseen "planetary mass object" may precursors of comets), and a few dwarf planets. lurk in the outer reaches of our solar system, according to new research on the orbits of minor For the study, Volk and Malhotra analyzed the tilt planets to be published in the Astronomical angles of the orbital planes of more than 600 Journal. -
1 Resonant Kuiper Belt Objects
Resonant Kuiper Belt Objects - a Review Renu Malhotra Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA Email: [email protected] Abstract Our understanding of the history of the solar system has undergone a revolution in recent years, owing to new theoretical insights into the origin of Pluto and the discovery of the Kuiper belt and its rich dynamical structure. The emerging picture of dramatic orbital migration of the planets driven by interaction with the primordial Kuiper belt is thought to have produced the final solar system architecture that we live in today. This paper gives a brief summary of this new view of our solar system's history, and reviews the astronomical evidence in the resonant populations of the Kuiper belt. Introduction Lying at the edge of the visible solar system, observational confirmation of the existence of the Kuiper belt came approximately a quarter-century ago with the discovery of the distant minor planet (15760) Albion (formerly 1992 QB1, Jewitt & Luu 1993). With the clarity of hindsight, we now recognize that Pluto was the first discovered member of the Kuiper belt. The current census of the Kuiper belt includes more than 2000 minor planets at heliocentric distances between ~30 au and ~50 au. Their orbital distribution reveals a rich dynamical structure shaped by the gravitational perturbations of the giant planets, particularly Neptune. Theoretical analysis of these structures has revealed a remarkable dynamic history of the solar system. The story is as follows (see Fernandez & Ip 1984, Malhotra 1993, Malhotra 1995, Fernandez & Ip 1996, and many subsequent works). -
Orbital Resonances and Chaos in the Solar System
Solar system Formation and Evolution ASP Conference Series, Vol. 149, 1998 D. Lazzaro et al., eds. ORBITAL RESONANCES AND CHAOS IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM Renu Malhotra Lunar and Planetary Institute 3600 Bay Area Blvd, Houston, TX 77058, USA E-mail: [email protected] Abstract. Long term solar system dynamics is a tale of orbital resonance phe- nomena. Orbital resonances can be the source of both instability and long term stability. This lecture provides an overview, with simple models that elucidate our understanding of orbital resonance phenomena. 1. INTRODUCTION The phenomenon of resonance is a familiar one to everybody from childhood. A very young child is delighted in a playground swing when an older companion drives the swing at its natural frequency and rapidly increases the swing amplitude; the older child accomplishes the same on her own without outside assistance by driving the swing at a frequency twice that of its natural frequency. Resonance phenomena in the Solar system are essentially similar – the driving of a dynamical system by a periodic force at a frequency which is a rational multiple of the natural frequency. In fact, there are many mathematical similarities with the playground analogy, including the fact of nonlinearity of the oscillations, which plays a fundamental role in the long term evolution of orbits in the planetary system. But there is also an important difference: in the playground, the child adjusts her driving frequency to remain in tune – hence in resonance – with the natural frequency which changes with the amplitude of the swing. Such self-tuning is sometimes realized in the Solar system; but it is more often and more generally the case that resonances come-and-go. -
The Origin of the High-Inclination Neptune Trojan 2005 TN53 J
A&A 464, 775–778 (2007) Astronomy DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20066297 & c ESO 2007 Astrophysics The origin of the high-inclination Neptune Trojan 2005 TN53 J. Li, L.-Y. Zhou, and Y.-S. Sun Department of Astronomy, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, PR China e-mail: [email protected] Received 25 August 2006 / Accepted 20 November 2006 ABSTRACT Aims. We explore the formation and evolution of the highly inclined orbit of Neptune Trojan 2005 TN53. Methods. With numerical simulations, we investigated a possible mechanism for the origin of the high-inclination Neptune Trojans as captured into the Trojan-type orbits by an initially eccentric Neptune during its eccentricity damping and rapid inward migration, then migrating to the present locations locked in Neptune’s 1:1 mean motion resonance. ◦ Results. Two 2005 TN53-type Trojans out of our 2000 test particles were produced with inclinations above 20 , moving on tadpole orbits librating around Neptune’s leading Lagrange point. Key words. methods: numerical – celestial mechanics – minor planets, asteroids – solar system: formation 1. Introduction Table 1. Orbital elements of 2005 TN53 in heliocentric frame referred to the J2000.0 ecliptic plane at epoch 2005 October 7. The uncertainties Trojan asteroids are small objects that share the semimajor axis at the 3 σ level in a, e, i are ± 0.1 AU, ± 0.01, and ± 0.1◦, respectively. of their host planet. They orbit the Sun with the same period as the planet and are said to be settled in the planet’s 1:1 mean mo- a (AU) ei(◦) Ω (◦) ω (◦) M (◦) tion resonance (MMR). -
Long-Term Evolution of the Neptune Trojan 2001 QR322
Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 347, 833Ð836 (2004) Long-term evolution of the Neptune Trojan 2001 QR322 R. Brasser,1 S. Mikkola,1 T.-Y. Huang,2 P. Wiegert3 and K. Innanen4 1Tuorla Observatory, University of Turku, Piikkio,¬ Finland 2Deptartment of Astronomy, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China 3Astronomy Unit, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada 4Deptartment of Physics and Astronomy, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada Accepted 2003 October 1. Received 2003 September 9; in original form 2003 April 23 ABSTRACT We simulated more than a hundred possible orbits of the Neptune Trojan 2001 QR322 for the age of the Solar system. The orbits were generated randomly according to the probability density derived from the covariance matrix of the orbital elements. The test trajectories librate ◦ ◦ around Neptune’s L4 point, with amplitudes varying from 40 to 75 and libration periods varying from 8900 to 9300 yr. The ν 18 secular resonance plays an important role. There is a separatrix of the resonance so that the resonant angle switches irregularly between libration and circulation. The orbits are chaotic, with observed Lyapunov times from 1.7 to 20 Myr, approximately. The probability of escape to a non-Trojan orbit in our simulations was low, and only occurred for orbits starting near the low-probability edge of the orbital element distribution (largest values of initial semimajor axis and small eccentricity). This suggests that the Trojan may well be a primordial object. Key words: celestial mechanics Ð minor planets, asteroids Ð Solar system: general. in the element vector q were computed as 1 INTRODUCTION According to the Minor Planet Center, 1571 Trojan asteroids have 6 been discovered. -
Origin and Dynamical Evolution of Neptune Trojans – I: Formation and Planetary Migration
Origin and Dynamical Evolution of Neptune Trojans – I: Formation and Planetary Migration Patryk Sofia Lykawka,1* Jonathan Horner,2 Barrie W. Jones 2 and Tadashi Mukai1 1 Dept. of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Kobe University, 1-1 rokkodai-cho, nada-ku, Kobe 657- 8501, Japan 2 Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK ******* This paper was published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 398, 1715-1729 (2009). [email protected] http://sites.google.com/site/patryksofialykawka/ ******* * Present address: International Center for Human Sciences (Planetary Sciences), Kinki University, 3-4-1 Kowakae, Higashiosaka-shi, Osaka-fu, 577-8502, Japan. E-mail address: [email protected] 1 of 25 ABSTRACT We present the results of detailed dynamical simulations of the effect of the migration of the four giant planets on both the transport of pre-formed Neptune Trojans, and the capture of new Trojans from a trans-Neptunian disk. The cloud of pre-formed Trojans consisted of thousands of massless particles placed on dynamically cold orbits around Neptune’s L4 and L5 Lagrange points, while the trans-Neptunian disk contained tens of thousands of such particles spread on dynamically cold orbits between the initial and final locations of Neptune. Through comparison of the results with previous work on the known Neptunian Trojans, we find that scenarios involving the slow migration of Neptune over a large distance (50 Myr to migrate from 18.1 AU to its current location, using an exponential-folding time of τ = 10 Myr) provide the best match to the properties of the known Trojans. -
Stability of Uranus and Neptune Trojans. the Case of 2001 QR322
A&A 410, 725–734 (2003) Astronomy DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361:20031275 & c ESO 2003 Astrophysics The MATROS project: Stability of Uranus and Neptune Trojans. The case of 2001 QR322 F. Marzari1, P. Tricarico1, and H. Scholl2 1 Dipartimento di Fisica, University of Padova, Via Marzolo 8, 35131 Padova, Italy 2 Observatoire de la Cˆote d’Azur, BP 4229, 06304 Nice Cedex 4, France Received 17 April 2003 / Accepted 8 August 2003 Abstract. We present in this paper an analysis of the long term stability of Trojan type orbits of both Uranus and Neptune. Employing the Frequency Map Analysis (hereinafter FMA) we measure the diffusion speed in the phase space for a large sample of Trojan orbits with short numerical integrations. High resolution diffusion maps are derived for different values of initial inclination. These maps outline where the most stable orbits can be found in the Trojan clouds of the two planets. The orbit of the newly discovered Neptune Trojan 2001 QR322 has been analysed in detail with the FMA method. In the phase space the body is located close to the border of a stable region for low inclination Neptune Trojans. Numerical integrations over 4.5 Gyr of clone orbits generated from the covariance matrix show that only 10% of the clones escape from the Trojan cloud. The proper frequencies of the Trojan motion computed with the FMA algorithm allow us to to derive a numerical secular theory. From this theory it is possible to locate in the phase space the main secular resonances that can perturb Trojan orbits of the two planets and lead to instability. -
Physical and Dynamical Study of Minor Bodies and Natural Satellites of the Solar System
PLANETARY SCIENCES: physical and dynamical study of minor bodies and natural satellites of the Solar System Monica Lazzarin The study of the minor bodies (asteroids, comets,trans-Neptunians, natural satellites etc.) is of particular relevance for understanding the formation process, the early phases and the subsequent dynamical, physical and chemical evolution of the Solar System. The lack of important modifications since their formation can give crucial clues on the status of the early solar nebula, and on the processes occurring some 4.5 billion years ago. Their observed diversity points to the existence of important thermal, dynamical and chemical gradients along the nebula that must also have affected the evolutionary history of the planets, and that requires a diversified approach for an overall vision. In particular, the following aspects that are subject of vast interest in the international community, constitute the scientific background of the present project (see references below of the research group and of other international groups on the subjects): A - Origin and nature of the Near Earth Asteroids/Objects (NEA/NEO). Their orbits come very close to that of the Earth, in several cases intersecting it and posing some impact threat. Their origin is not well known yet: they could be inactive/dormant comets, with a very pristine composition, but also more geologically processed asteroids. The NEA/NEOs population appears extremely heterogeneous in all their aspects: physical properties, shapes, albedos, surface compositions. A fraction (possibly large) of the total are binary systems; studies of their light curves demonstrate in some cases a complex rotational status, others show a long rotational period not easily explained in the framework of the current dynamical and collisional models. -
Formation and Dynamical Evolution of the Neptune Trojans the Influence of the Initial Solar System Architecture
Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 404, 1272–1280 (2010) doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2010.16381.x Formation and dynamical evolution of the Neptune Trojans – the influence of the initial Solar system architecture P. S. Lykawka,1† J. Horner,2 B. W. Jones3 and T. Mukai4 1International Centre for Human Sciences (Planetary Sciences), Kinki University, 3-4-1 Kowakae, Higashiosaka, Osaka, 577-8502, Japan 2Department of Physics, Science Laboratories, University of Durham, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE 3Department of Physics and Astronomy, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA 4Kobe University, 1-1 rokkodai-cho, nada-ku, Kobe 657-8501, Japan Accepted 2010 January 19. Received 2010 January 19; in original form 2009 September 1 Downloaded from ABSTRACT Current models of Solar system formation suggest that the four giant planets accreted as a significantly more compact system than we observe today. In this work, we investigate the dynamical stability of pre-formed Neptune Trojans under the gravitational influence of the http://mnras.oxfordjournals.org/ four giant planets in compact planetary architectures, over 10 Myr. In our modelling, the initial orbital locations of Uranus and Neptune (aN) were varied to produce systems in which those planets moved on non-resonant orbits or in which they lay in their mutual 1:2, 2:3 and 3:4 mean-motion resonances (MMRs). In total, 420 simulations were carried out, examining 42 different architectures, with a total of 840 000 particles across all runs. In the non-resonant cases, the Trojans suffered only moderate levels of dynamical erosion, with the most compact systems (those with aN ≤ 18 au) losing around 50 per cent of their Trojans by the end of the integrations. -
Arxiv:1807.06783V1 [Astro-Ph.EP] 18 Jul 2018
Accepted for publication in the AJ. Preprint typeset using LATEX style emulateapj v. 01/23/15 THE CONTRIBUTION OF DWARF PLANETS TO THE ORIGIN OF LOW INCLINATION COMETS BY THE REPLENISHMENT OF MEAN MOTION RESONANCES IN DEBRIS DISKS. M. A. Munoz-Guti~ errez´ Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan A. Peimbert and B. Pichardo. Instituto de Astronom´ıa,Universidad Nacional Aut´onomade M´exico,Apdo. postal 70-264 Ciudad Universitaria, M´exico Accepted for publication in the AJ. ABSTRACT In this work we explore a new dynamical path for the delivery of low-inclination comets. In a con- figuration formed by an interior giant planet and an exterior massive debris disk, where the mass is accounted for by the 50 largest objects in the disk, the strongest mean motion resonances of the giant, located along the belt, are replenished with new material (test particles) due to the influence of the 50 massive objects. Once in resonance, slow chaotic diffusion stirs the orbital elements of the cometary nuclei enough to encounter the giant and to be scattered by it. When the disk is massive enough, both resonant and non-resonant particles are stirred quickly to encounter the giant and form an scattered disk component, greatly increasing the rate for the delivery of cometary material to the inner part of the system. This mechanism is applicable both to the solar system and extrasolar systems in general. Preliminary results, using a disk as massive as the classical Kuiper belt, indicate that the mechanism here proposed can account for about a tenth of the required injection rate to maintain the population of ecliptic comets in steady state.