Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
1782145 | Planetary and Space Science | 2009 | 7 Pages |
Abstract
In long-term stability studies of terrestrial planets moving in the habitable zone (HZ) of a sun-like star, we distinguish four different configurations: (i) planets moving in binary star systems, (ii) the inner type (where the gas giant moves outside the HZ), (iii) the outer type (where the gas giant is closer to the star, than the HZ) and (iv) the Trojan type (where the gas giant moves in the HZ). Since earlier calculations indicated, that the stability of the motion in the HZ also depends on the inclination of the terrestrial planet orbits, we present a detailed numerical investigation to show correlations between the eccentricity, the mass and the distance of the giant planet for various inclinations of the terrestrial planets. The orbital stability of the HZ was examined for all four configurations stated above. While we could find hardly any stable orbits for the first three types for inclinations higher than 40â, the Trojan planets can be stable up to an inclination of 60â. Additionally, we could also find some stabilizing effects of the inclination for the first three types. As dynamical model we used the elliptic restricted three-body problem, which consists of two massive and one mass-less body. This allows an application to all detected and future extrasolar single planet systems.
Keywords
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Earth and Planetary Sciences
Geophysics
Authors
Barbara Funk, Richard Schwarz, Elke Pilat-Lohinger, Áron Süli, Rudolf Dvorak,