Detectability of Habitable Exomoons with $$\boldsymbol {\it Kepler}$$-Class Photometry

Kipping, David

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-22269-6_7

Cited by 13 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 18 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The more massive and relatively dry moon represents what we guess a captured, Earth-like exomoon could be like, while the latter one corresponds to a satellite that has formed in situ. Note that a mass of 10 M G (M G being the mass of Ganymede) corresponds to roughly 0.25 M 4 , which is slightly above the detection limit for combined TTV and TDV with Kepler (Kipping et al, 2009). Our assumptions for the Super-Ganymede composition are backed up by observations of the Jupiter and Saturn satellite systems (Showman and Malhotra, 1999;Grasset et al, 2000) as well as terrestrial planet and satellite formation studies (Kuchner, 2003;Ogihara and Ida, 2012).…”

Section: Energy Reservoirs On Exomoonsmentioning

confidence: 70%

“…As shown by Kipping et al (2009), the maximum Kepler magnitude to allow for the detection of an Earth-like moon is about 12.5. We conclude that such moons around Kepler-22b are detectable if they exist, and their habitability could be evaluated with the methods provided in this communication.…”

Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For the time being, we will neglect the actual detectability of such signals with Kepler but discuss it in Section 6 (see also Kipping et al, 2009).…”

Section: Orbits Of Habitable Exomoonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…No exomoon has been detected so far, but it has been shown that exomoons with masses down to 20% the mass of Earth (M 4 ) are detectable with the space-based Kepler telescope (Kipping et al, 2009). Combined measurements of a planet's transit timing variation (TTV) and transit duration variation (TDV) can provide information about the satellite's mass (M s ), its semimajor axis around the planet (a ps ) (Sartoretti and Schneider, 1999;Simon et al, 2007;Kipping, 2009a), and possibly about the inclination (i) of the satellite's orbit with respect to the orbit around the star (Kipping, 2009b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Exomoon Habitability Constrained by Illumination and Tidal Heating

2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The detection of moons orbiting extrasolar planets (''exomoons'') has now become feasible. Once they are discovered in the circumstellar habitable zone, questions about their habitability will emerge. Exomoons are likely to be tidally locked to their planet and hence experience days much shorter than their orbital period around the star and have seasons, all of which works in favor of habitability. These satellites can receive more illumination per area than their host planets, as the planet reflects stellar light and emits thermal photons. On the contrary, eclipses can significantly alter local climates on exomoons by reducing stellar illumination. In addition to radiative heating, tidal heating can be very large on exomoons, possibly even large enough for sterilization. We identify combinations of physical and orbital parameters for which radiative and tidal heating are strong enough to trigger a runaway greenhouse. By analogy with the circumstellar habitable zone, these constraints define a circumplanetary ''habitable edge.'' We apply our model to hypothetical moons around the recently discovered exoplanet Kepler-22b and the giant planet candidate KOI211.01 and describe, for the first time, the orbits of habitable exomoons. If either planet hosted a satellite at a distance greater than 10 planetary radii, then this could indicate the presence of a habitable moon.

show abstract

Section: Energy Reservoirs On Exomoonsmentioning

confidence: 70%

Section: Summary and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For the time being, we will neglect the actual detectability of such signals with Kepler but discuss it in Section 6 (see also Kipping et al, 2009).…”

Section: Orbits Of Habitable Exomoonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Exomoon Habitability Constrained by Illumination and Tidal Heating

2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Although some of the original studies, in which these methods have been presented, expected that moons and rings could be detectable with the past CoRoT space mission or with the still active Kepler space telescope (Sartoretti and Schneider 1999;Barnes and Fortney 2004;Kipping et al 2009;, no exomoon or exoring has been unequivocally discovered and confirmed as of today. This is likely not because these extrasolar objects and structures do not exist, but because they are too small to be distinguished from the noise.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detecting and Characterizing Exomoons and Exorings

Heller¹

2017

Handbook of Exoplanets

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Since the discovery of a planet transiting its host star in the year 2000, thousands of additional exoplanets and exoplanet candidates have been detected, mostly by NASA's Kepler space telescope. Some of them are almost as small as the Earth's moon. As the solar system is teeming with moons, more than a hundred of which are in orbit around the eight local planets, and with all of the local giant planets showing complex ring systems, astronomers have naturally started to search for moons and rings around exoplanets in the past few years. We here discuss the principles of the observational methods that have been proposed to find moons and rings beyond the solar system and we review the first searches. Though no exomoon or exoring has been unequivocally validated so far, theoretical and technological requirements are now on the verge of being mature for such discoveries.

show abstract

Climatological and ultraviolet‐based habitability of possible exomoons in F‐star systems

Sato

Cuntz

2017

Astron Nachr

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We explore the astrobiological significance of F-type stars of spectral type between F5 V and F9.5 V, which possess Jupiter-type planets within or close to their climatological habitable zones. These planets, or at least a subset of those, may also possess rocky exomoons, which potentially offer habitable environments. Our work considers eight selected systems. The Jupiter-type planets in these systems are in notably differing orbits with eccentricities between 0.08 (about Mars) and 0.72. We consider the stellar UV environments provided by the photospheric stellar radiation, which allows us to compute the UV habitable zones for the systems. Following previous studies, DNA is taken as a proxy for carbon-based macromolecules following the paradigm that extraterrestrial biology might be based on hydrocarbons. We found that the damage inflicted on DNA is notably different for the range of systems studied, and also varies according to the orbit of the Jupiter-type planet, especially for systems of high ellipticity, as expected. For some systems excessive values of damage are attained compared to today's Earth or during the Archean eon. Considering that the detection of exomoons around different types of stars will remain challenging in the foreseeable future, we view our work also as an example and template for investigating the combined requirements of climatological and UV-based habitability for exosolar objects.

show abstract

Detectability of Habitable Exomoons with $$\boldsymbol {\it Kepler}$$-Class Photometry

Cited by 13 publications

References 18 publications

Exomoon Habitability Constrained by Illumination and Tidal Heating

Exomoon Habitability Constrained by Illumination and Tidal Heating

Detecting and Characterizing Exomoons and Exorings

Climatological and ultraviolet‐based habitability of possible exomoons in F‐star systems

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About