A four-planet system observed several years ago by the Kepler spacecraft is actually a rarity: Its planets, all miniature Neptunes nestled close to the star, are orbiting in a unique resonance that ...
The University of Chicago's Sean Mills (left) and Daniel Fabrycky describe the complex orbital structure of the Kepler-223 expolanetary system in the May 11, 2016 Advance Online edition of Nature.
These animations show approximately 200,000 years of orbital evolution in the Kepler-223 planetary system. The planets' interactions with the disk of gas and dust in which they formed caused their ...