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You are here: Home › Research Activities › Sun and Solar System › The Planets and minor bodies in the Solar System and other stellar systems › Recent projects and on-going activity in the study of planets and minor bodies

Models of the origin and evolution of planets, natural satellites and minor bodies

The formation of the solar system is one of the most complex arguments in planetary science. In fact, even though observations provide direct evidence on the current state of its constituent bodies, it is very complex to deduce, only from these, the process which generated them. The Planetology groups of INAF-IASF and INAF-IFSI in Rome, have been conducting, since the '70s, pioneering work on the origin of various bodies of the solar system and the principal processes that determine their evolution and differentiation, accompanied by numerical modeling.

PLANETARY SYSTEMS, TWO DISTINCT FAMILIES: THE HOST STAR LEAVES ITS SIGNATURE

Oct 13, 2026

PLANETARY SYSTEMS, TWO DISTINCT FAMILIES: THE HOST STAR LEAVES ITS SIGNATURE An international team led by INAF analysed multi-planet systems and found that they split into two distinct families born around different types of stars. The study, published in Nature Astronomy, shows for the first time that the host star's properties determine the architecture and dynamical evolution of the entire planetary system

NGC 362D: TWO RECORD-BREAKING FINDINGS SHED LIGHT ON THE EVOLUTION OF MILLISECOND PULSARS

Sep 30, 2026

NGC 362D: TWO RECORD-BREAKING FINDINGS SHED LIGHT ON THE EVOLUTION OF MILLISECOND PULSARS An INAF- and University of Bologna-led research team has discovered a binary system caught in an exceptionally rare evolutionary stage, consisting of a millisecond pulsar and the youngest white dwarf ever observed in a system of this kind

AN "IMPROBABLE" PLANETARY SYSTEM: COMPACT, COPLANAR, AND SHAPED BY A BROWN DWARF

Jun 17, 2026

AN "IMPROBABLE" PLANETARY SYSTEM: COMPACT, COPLANAR, AND SHAPED BY A BROWN DWARF An international team involving over ten institutions, with a strong participation from ESO and INAF, has characterised TOI-201 c, the transiting brown dwarf with the longest period for which mass has been measured. The study, published today in Nature, reveals a compact, coplanar system in which the presence of a massive, eccentric object redefines the stability boundaries for the inner planets