Transits of extrasolar moons around luminous giant planets

Heller, René

doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201527496

Cited by 19 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…On the one hand, the habitability of some exomoon systems may therefore be precluded based upon the presence of a luminous host planet, although planetary illumination itself does not necessarily limit an exomoon's habitability (Heller 2016). On the other hand, we expect polar amplification of warming in all cases, which may suggest that exomoons in orbit around a luminous host planet may be less likely to develop polar ice caps.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In terms of the odds of an actual detection of the climatic effects described in this paper, this could in principle be possible if the moon's electromagnetic spectrum (either reflection or emission) could be separated from that of the planet. This might be possible in very fortunate cases where a large moon is transiting its luminous giant planet (Heller & Albrecht 2014;Heller 2016) or where both the planet and its moon transit their common low-mass host star (Kaltenegger 2010). Alternatively, if the moon is subject to extreme tidal heating, it could even outshine its host planet in the infrared and therefore directly present its emission spectrum (Peters & Turner 2013) while the planet would still dominate the visible part of the spectrum, where it reflects much more light than the moon.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At the transitional mass regime to giant planets, models of moon formation have shown that Marssized moons should commonly form around the most massive super-Jovian gas giant planets (Heller & Pudritz 2015b,a). Photometric accuracies of 10 −2 have now been achieved on BDs using the Hubble Space Telescope (Zhou et al 2016), and an improvement of about one order of magnitude should allow the detection of moons transiting luminous giant planets that can be directly imaged around their host star (Cabrera & Schneider 2007;Heller & Albrecht 2014;Heller 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Exploring exomoon atmospheres with an idealized general circulation model

Haqq-Misra

Heller

2018

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Recent studies have shown that large exomoons can form in the accretion disks around super-Jovian extrasolar planets. These planets are abundant at about 1 AU from Sunlike stars, which makes their putative moons interesting for studies of habitability. Technological advances could soon make an exomoon discovery with Kepler or the upcoming CHEOPS and PLATO space missions possible. Exomoon climates might be substantially different from exoplanet climates because the day-night cycles on moons are determined by the moon's synchronous rotation with its host planet. Moreover, planetary illumination at the top of the moon's atmosphere and tidal heating at the moon's surface can be substantial, which can affect the redistribution of energy on exomoons. Using an idealized general circulation model with simplified hydrologic, radiative, and convective processes, we calculate surface temperature, wind speed, mean meridional circulation, and energy transport on a 2.5 Mars-mass moon orbiting a 10-Jupiter-mass at 1 AU from a Sun-like star. The strong thermal irradiation from a young giant planet causes the satellite's polar regions to warm, which remains consistent with the dynamically-driven polar amplification seen in Earth models that lack ice-albedo feedback. Thermal irradiation from young, luminous giant planets onto water-rich exomoons can be strong enough to induce water loss on a planet, which could lead to a runaway greenhouse. Moons that are in synchronous rotation with their host planet and do not experience a runaway greenhouse could experience substantial polar melting induced by the polar amplification of planetary illumination and geothermal heating from tidal effects.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Exploring exomoon atmospheres with an idealized general circulation model

Haqq-Misra

Heller

2018

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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“…One could either try and detect the shadows and transits of the moons across their host planet in the integrated (i.e. unresolved) infrared light curve of the planet-moon system (Cabrera and Schneider 2007;Heller 2016), or one could search for variations in the position of the planet-moon photocenter with respect to some reference object, e.g. another star or nearby exoplanet in the same system (Cabrera and Schneider 2007;Agol et al 2015).…”

Section: Other Methods For Exomoon Detectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detecting and Characterizing Exomoons and Exorings

Heller¹

2017

Handbook of Exoplanets

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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.

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“…This implies relatively small orbital separations from the star, typically < 1 AU (Szabó et al 2006). It might, however, be possible to image exomoons with extreme tidal heating (Peters and Turner 2013) or to observe the transits of moons around luminous giant planets (Heller and Albrecht 2014;Heller 2016;Sengupta and Marley 2016) at several AU from their host stars.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of multiple heat sources on exomoon habitable zones

Dobos

Heller

Turner

2017

A&A

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With dozens of Jovian and super-Jovian exoplanets known to orbit their host stars in or near the stellar habitable zones, it has recently been suggested that moons the size of Mars could offer abundant surface habitats beyond the solar system. Several searches for such exomoons are now underway, and the exquisite astronomical data quality of upcoming space missions and ground-based extremely large telescopes could make the detection and characterization of exomoons possible in the near future. Here we explore the effects of tidal heating on the potential of Mars-to Earth-sized satellites to host liquid surface water, and we compare the tidal heating rates predicted by tidal equilibrium model and a viscoelastic model. In addition to tidal heating, we consider stellar radiation, planetary illumination and thermal heat from the planet. However, the effects of a possible moon atmosphere are neglected. We map the circumplanetary habitable zone for different stellar distances in specific star-planet-satellite configurations, and determine those regions where tidal heating dominates over stellar radiation. We find that the 'thermostat effect' of the viscoelastic model is significant not just at large distances from the star, but also in the stellar habitable zone, where stellar radiation is prevalent. We also find that tidal heating of Mars-sized moons with eccentricities between 0.001 and 0.01 is the dominant energy source beyond 3-5 AU from a Sun-like star and beyond 0.4-0.6 AU from an M3 dwarf star. The latter would be easier to detect (if they exist), but their orbital stability might be under jeopardy due to the gravitational perturbations from the star.

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Transits of extrasolar moons around luminous giant planets

Cited by 19 publications

References 46 publications

Exploring exomoon atmospheres with an idealized general circulation model

Exploring exomoon atmospheres with an idealized general circulation model

Detecting and Characterizing Exomoons and Exorings

The effect of multiple heat sources on exomoon habitable zones

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