Related papers: Exploring exomoon atmospheres with an idealized ge…
Discoveries of extrasolar planets in the habitable zone (HZ) of their parent star lead to questions about the habitability of massive moons orbiting planets in the HZ. Around low-mass stars, the HZ is much closer to the star than for…
More than 200 moons exist in our Solar System, yet no exomoon has been confirmed to date. While the innermost two planets of the Solar System lack natural satellites and most studies favour the existence of exomoons around long-period…
Moons of giant planets may represent an alternative to the classical picture of habitable worlds. They may exist within the circumstellar habitable zone of a parent star, and through tidal energy dissipation they may also offer alternative…
The formation of satellites is thought to be a natural by-product of planet formation in our Solar System, and thus, moons of extrasolar planets (exomoons) may be abundant in extrasolar planetary systems, as well. Exomoons have yet to be…
Assuming our Solar System as typical, exomoons may outnumber exoplanets. If their habitability fraction is similar, they would thus constitute the largest portion of habitable real estate in the Universe. Icy moons in our Solar System, such…
An exomoon on a non perfectly circular orbit experiences tidal heating that is capable to significantly contribute to the thermal brightness of the moon. Here we argue that the thermal heat is unevenly distributed on the moon's surface, the…
What kind of environment may exist on terrestrial planets around other stars? In spite of the lack of direct observations, it may not be premature to speculate on exoplanetary climates, for instance to optimize future telescopic…
All the giant planets in the solar system host a large number of natural satellites. Moons in extrasolar systems are difficult to detect, but a Neptune-sized exomoon candidate has been recently found around a Jupiter-sized planet in the…
Many exoplanets have been found in orbits close to their host stars and thus they are subject to the effects of photo-evaporation. Previous studies have shown that a large portion of exoplanets detected by the Kepler mission have been…
The search for life outside of the Solar System should not be restricted to exclusively planetary bodies; large moons of extrasolar planets may also be common habitable environments throughout the Galaxy. Extrasolar moons, or exomoons, may…
Satellite formation is a natural by-product of planet formation. With the discovery of nu- merous extrasolar planets, it is likely that moons of extrasolar planets (exomoons) will soon be discovered. Some of the most promising techniques…
A free-floating planet is a planetary-mass object that orbits around a non-stellar massive object (e.g. a brown dwarf) or around the Galactic Center. The presence of exomoons orbiting free-floating planets has been theoretically predicted…
The exquisite photometric precision of the Kepler space telescope now puts the detection of extrasolar moons at the horizon. Here, we firstly review observational and analytical techniques that have recently been proposed to find exomoons.…
Detecting massive satellites of extrasolar planets has now become feasible, which led naturally to questions about their habitability. In a previous study we presented constraints on the habitability of moons from stellar and planetary…
The recent discoveries of terrestrial exoplanets and super-Earths extending over a broad range of orbital and physical parameters suggest that these planets will span a wide range of climatic regimes. Characterization of the atmospheres of…
Exomoons may play an important role in determining the habitability of worlds outside of our solar system. They can stabilize conditions, alter the climate by breaking tidal locking with the parent star, drive tidal heating, and perhaps…
It is conceivable that a few thousand confirmed exoplanets initially harboured satellites similar to the moons of the Solar system or larger. Could some of them have survived over the aeons of dynamical evolution to the present day? The…
One of the unique aspects of Earth is that it has a fractionally large Moon, which is thought to have formed from a Moon-forming disk generated by a giant impact. The Moon stabilizes the Earth's spin axis at least by several degrees and…
Free-floating planets (FFPs) can result from dynamical scattering processes happening in the first few million years of a planetary system's life. Several models predict the possibility, for these isolated planetary-mass objects, to retain…
The characterization of exoplanetary atmospheres has come of age in the last decade, as astronomical techniques now allow for albedos, chemical abundances, temperature profiles and maps, rotation periods and even wind speeds to be measured.…