The solar hydrologic cycle is the process of comets delivering water and gasses to the planets by collision, and solar wind stripping water and gasses from the planets and delivering them back to the Kuiper Belt. This new theory of solar hydrologic cycle provides that the solar hydrologic cycle is the continuation of planetary formation, and the cause of outer planets becoming gas giants, inner planets staying small rocks.

Perturbative analyses of planetary resonances commonly predict singularities and/or divergences of resonance widths at very low and very high eccentricities. We have recently re-examined the nature of these divergences using non-perturbative numerical analyses, making use of Poincaré sections but from a different perspective relative to previous implementations of this method. This perspective reveals fine structure of resonances which otherwise remains hidden in conventional approaches, including analytical, semi-analytical and numerical-averaging approaches based on the critical resonant angle. At low eccentricity, first order resonances do not have diverging widths but have two asymmetric branches leading away from the nominal resonance location. A sequence of structures called “low-eccentricity resonant bridges” connecting neighboring resonances is revealed. At planet-grazing eccentricity, the true resonance width is non-divergent. At higher eccentricities, the new results reveal hitherto unknown resonant structures and show that these parameter regions have a loss of some – though not necessarily entire – resonance libration zones to chaos. The chaos at high eccentricities was previously attributed to the overlap of neighboring resonances. The new results reveal the additional role of bifurcations and co-existence of phase-shifted resonance zones at higher eccentricities. By employing a geometric point of view, we relate the high eccentricity phase space structures and their transitions to the shapes of resonant orbits in the rotating frame. We outline some directions for future research to advance understanding of the dynamics of mean motion resonances.

We have studied the probabilistic evolution of four candidates for young pairs of trans-Neptunian objects: 2003 QL91 – 2015 VA173, 1999 HV11 – 2015 VF172, 2002 CY154 – 2005 EW318 and 2013 SD101 – 2015 VY170 over 10 Myr in the past. All pairs belong to cold Classical Kuiper Belt objects. We concluded that the age of the considered pairs exceeds 10 Myr.

The second (after Pluto) plausible target object for the New Horizons mission is 2014 MU69. It is a classical TNO, a primordial contact binary. Identifying any material in the vicinities of a target object is of an especial concern for planning cosmic fly-byes, as it is hazardous for a space probe. Luckily, no such material has been reported for MU69 up to now. The point of our report is that this lucky absence is just a dynamical consequence of the physical nature of MU69. Spinning gravitating dumbbells create zones of dynamical chaos around them, and this has a clearing effect: any material put in orbits around a rotating dumbbell (e.g., any material ejected from its surface) cannot be long-lived in such zones; it either escapes into space, or returns to the parent body’s surface. As the orbiting matter is removed in this way, a spinning gravitating dumbbell clears its vicinities. We show that MU69 is able to create such a clearing, making itself a safe and hospitable target for a space mission. Therefore, the guest probe is expected to be safe on arrival.

TAOS II is a next-generation occultation survey with the goal of measuring the size distribution of the small end of the Kuiper Belt (objects with diameters 0.5–30 km). Such objects have magnitudes r > 30, and are thus undetectable by direct imaging. The project will operate three telescopes at San Pedro Mártir Observatory in Baja California, México. Each telescope will be equipped with a custom-built camera comprised of a focal-plane array of CMOS imagers. The cameras will be capable of reading out image data from 10,000 stars at a cadence of 20 Hz. The telescopes will monitor the same set of stars simultaneously to search for coincident occultation detections, thus minimising the false-positive rate. This talk described the project, and reported on the progress of the development of the survey infrastructure.

Stellar occultations by solar system objects allow kilometric accuracy, permit the detection of tenuous atmospheres (at nbar level), and the discovery of rings. The main limitation was the prediction accuracy, typically 40 mas, corresponding to about 1,000 km projected at the body. This lead to large time dedicated to astrometry, tedious logistical issues, and more often than not, mere miss of the event. The Gaia catalog, with sub-mas accuracy, hugely improves both the star positions, resulting in achievable accuracies of about 1 mas for the shadow track on Earth. This permits much more carefully planned campaigns, with success rate approaching 100%, weather permitting. Scientific perspectives are presented, e.g. central flashes caused by Plutos atmosphere revealing hazes and winds near its surface, grazing occultations showing topographic features, occultations by Chariklos rings unveiling dynamical features such as proper mode “breathing”.

Stellar occultations are a unique technique to access physical characteristics of distant solar system objects from the ground. They allow the measure of the size and the shape at kilometric level, the detection of tenuous atmospheres (few nanobars), and the investigation of close vicinity (satellites, rings) of Transneptunian objects and Centaurs. This technique is made successful thanks to accurate predictions of occultations. Accuracy of the predictions depends on the uncertainty in the position of the occulted star and the object's orbit. The Gaia stellar catalogue (Gaia Collaboration (2017)) now allows to get accurate astrometric stellar positions (to the mas level). The main uncertainty remains on the orbit. In this context, we now take advantage of the NIMA method (Desmars et al.(2015)) for the orbit determination and of the Gaia DR1 catalogue for the astrometry. In this document, we show how the orbit determination is improved by reducing current and some past observations with Gaia DR1. Moreover, we also use more than 45 past positive occultations observed in the 2009-2017 period to derive very accurate astrometric positions only depending on the position of the occulted stars (about few mas with Gaia DR1). We use the case of (10199) Chariklo as an illustration. The main limitation lies in the imprecision of the proper motions which is going to be solved by the Gaia DR2 release.

The stellar occultation technique is a powerful tool to study distant small solar system bodies. Currently, around 2 500 trans-neptunian objects (TNOs) and Centaurs are known. With the astrometry from Gaia and large surveys like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), accurate predictions of occultation events will be available to tens of thousands of TNOs and Centaurs and boost the knowledge of the outer solar system.

The asteroids (more precisely: objects of the main asteroid belt) and Kuiper Belt objects (more precisely: objects of the cold classical Kuiper Belt) are leftovers of the building material for our earth and all other planets in our solar system from more than 4.5 billion years ago. At the time of their formation those were typically 100 km large objects. They were called planetesimals, built up from icy and dusty grains. In our current paradigm of planet formation it was turbulent flows and metastable flow patterns, like zonal flows and vortices, that concentrated mm to cm sized icy dust grains in sufficient numbers that a streaming instability followed by a gravitational collapse of these particle clump was triggered. The entire picture is sometimes referred to as gravoturbulent formation of planetesimals. What was missing until recently, was a physically motivated prediction on the typical sizes at which planetesimals should form via this process. Our numerical simulations in the past had only shown a correlation between numerical resolution and planetesimal size and thus no answer was possible (Johansen et al.2011). But with the lastest series of simulations on JUQUEEN (Stephan & Doctor 2015), covering all the length scales down to the physical size of actual planetesimals, we were able to obtain values for the turbulent particle diffusion as a function of the particle load in the gas. Thus, we have all necessary data at hand to feed a 'back of the envelope' calculation that predicts the size of planetesimals as result of a competition between gravitational concentration and turbulent diffusion. Using the diffusion values obtained in the numerical simulations it predicts planetesimal sizes on the order of 100 km, which suprisingly coincides with the measured data from both asteroids (Bottke et al.2005) as well from Kuiper Belt objects (Nesvorny et al.2011).

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is an infrared-optimized astrophysics observatory to be launched in 2018. JWST is designed to find and study the first galaxies that formed in the early universe, to peer through dusty clouds to see star and planet formation at high spatial resolution, to obtain spectra for characterizing exoplanet atmospheres, and of rocky and icy bodies throughout the Solar System. Laboratory Astrophysics needs are related to molecular/solid data for exoplanet atmospheres and rocky/icy surfaces in the Solar System.

The composition of interstellar matter is driven by environmental parameters and results from extreme interstellar medium physico-chemical conditions. Astrochemists must rely on remote observations to monitor and analyze the interstellar solids composition. They bring additional information from the study of analogues produced in the laboratory, placed in simulated space environments. Planetologists and cosmochemists access and spectroscopically examine collected extraterrestrial material in the laboratory. Diffuse interstellar medium and molecular clouds observations set constraints on the composition of organic solids that can then be compared with collected extraterrestrial materials analyses, to shed light on their possible links.

We update the list of candidates to be considered by the IAU as dwarf planets using the criterium suggested by Tancredi & Favre (2008). We add here the information collected in the last 10 years (mostly the sizes and albedos by the herschel hey program TNOs Are Cool). We compare the physical characteristics of these candidates with the physical characteristics of the rest of the TNOs. Our goal is to study if there are common physical properties among the candidates that enable the identification of a dwarf planet.

On the long road from dust to planets there are planetesimals. We review and criticize proposed mechanisms for planetesimal formation, and point out topics for future work.

The dust measured in debris disks traces the position of planetesimal belts. In our Solar System, we are also able to measure the largest planetesimals directly and can extrapolate down to make an estimate of the dust. The zodiacal dust from the asteroid belt is better constrained than the only rudimentary measurements of Kuiper belt dust. Dust models will thus be based on the current orbital distribution of the larger bodies which provide the collisional source. The orbital distribution of many Kuiper belt objects is strongly affected by dynamical interactions with Neptune, and the structure cannot be understood without taking this into account. We present the debiased Kuiper belt as measured by the Canada-France Ecliptic Plane Survey (CFEPS). This model includes the absolute populations for objects with diameters >100 km, measured orbital distributions, and size distributions of the components of the Kuiper belt: the classical belt (hot, stirred, and kernel components), the scattering disk, the detached objects, and the resonant objects (1:1, 5:4, 4:3, 3:2 including Kozai subcomponent, 5:3, 7:4, 2:1, 7:3, 5:2, 3:1, and 5:1). Because a large fraction of known debris disks are consistent with dust at Kuiper belt distances from the host stars, the CFEPS Kuiper belt model provides an excellent starting point for a debris disk model, as the dynamical interactions with planets interior to the disk are well-understood and can be precisely modelled using orbital integrations.

The angular momenta of rarefied preplanetesimals needed for formation of small-body binaries can be obtained at collisions of preplanetesimals. Trans-Neptunian objects, including trans-Neptunian binaries, could be formed from contracting rarefied preplanetesimals.

Main sequence stars are commonly surrounded by disks of dust. From lifetime arguments, it is inferred that the dust particles are not primordial but originate from the collision of planetesimals, similar to the asteroids, comets and KBOs in our Solar system. The presence of these debris disks around stars with a wide range of masses, luminosities, and metallicities, with and without binary companions, is evidence that planetesimal formation is a robust process that can take place under a wide range of conditions. Debris disks can help us learn about the formation, evolution and diversity of planetary systems.

By pure coincidence, for the next few years the orbit of the satellite Namaka around the dwarf planet Haumea (formerly 2003 EL61) is nearly edge-on to our line-of-sight. This type of configuration does not last for long, because as Haumea travels around the sun in its 283 year orbit, we continuously see the Haumean system from different angles. It is only edge-on at the angle we see right now, and at the angle it will again be in 141 years – half of a Haumean year from now. In addition to being an interesting coincidence, the fact that the orbit of Namaka is nearly edge-on provides the opportunity to obtain an enormous amount of information about the Haumean system. We present measurements of the timing of these events observed from Laboratrio Nacional de Astrofsica (LNA), partner in an international campaign to observe these events from the most suitable mid-sized telescopes.

The mean angular momentum associated with the collision of two celestial objects moving in almost circular heliocentric orbits was studied. The results of these studies were used to develop models of the formation of binaries at the stage of rarefied preplanetesimals. The models can explain a greater fraction of binaries formed at greater distances from the Sun. Sometimes there could be two centers of contraction inside the rotating preplanetesimal formed as the result of a collision between two rarefied preplanetesimals. Such formation of binaries could result in binaries with almost the same masses of components separated by a large distance. Formation of a disk around the primary could result because the angular momentum that was obtained by a rarefied preplanetesimal formed by collision was greater than the critical angular momentum for a solid body. One or several satellites of the primary could be formed from the disk.