Related papers: Can Moons Have Moons?

Gas giant planets in the Solar system host large satellite systems with multiple regular and irregular moons. Regular moons revolve around their host planet in circular, low inclination short period orbits, and are thought to form in-situ…

The Earth's comparatively massive moon, formed via a giant impact on the proto-Earth, has played an important role in the development of life on our planet, both in the history and strength of the ocean tides and in stabilizing the chaotic…

The recent announcement of a Neptune-sized exomoon candidate around the transiting Jupiter-sized object Kepler-1625 b could indicate the presence of a hitherto unknown kind of gas giant moons, if confirmed. Three transits have been…

The circumplanetary environments in our Solar System host a stunning array of moon and ring systems. Study of these environs has yielded valuable insights into planetary system formation and evolution, and there is every reason to believe…

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…

With the availability of considerably more data, we revisit the question of how special our Solar System is, compared to observed exoplanetary systems. To this goal, we employ a mathematical transformation that allows for a meaningful,…

A handful of stars are known to host both an inner system of multiple transiting planets and an outer giant planet. These systems all feature a prominent gap between the orbits of two of the transiting planets, distinguishing them from…

Exomoons represent a crucial missing puzzle piece in our efforts to understand extrasolar planetary systems. To address this deficiency, we here describe an exomoon survey of 70 cool, giant transiting exoplanet candidates found by Kepler.…

In recent years, technical and theoretical work to detect moons and rings around exoplanets has been attempted. The small mass/size ratios between moons and planets means this is very challenging, having only one exoplanetary system where…

The sizes of small planets have been known to be bi-modal, with a gap separating planets that have lost their primordial atmospheres (super-Earths), and the ones that retain them (mini-Neptunes). Here, we report evidences for another…

We investigate the obliquity and spin period of Earth-Moon like systems after 4.5 Gyr of tidal evolution with various satellite masses and initial planetary obliquity and discuss their relations to the habitability of the planet. We find…

The presence of giant planets influences potentially habitable worlds in numerous ways. Massive celestial neighbors can facilitate the formation of planetary cores and modify the influx of asteroids and comets towards Earth-analogs later…

Compared to the giant planets in the solar system, exoplanets have many remarkable properties such as the prevalence of giant planets on eccentric orbits and the presence of hot Jupiters. Planet-planet scattering (PPS) between giant planets…

Since the discovery of the first exoplanet we have known that other planetary systems can look quite unlike our own. However, until recently we have only been able to probe the upper range of the planet size distribution. The high precision…

Moons orbiting rocky exoplanets in compact orbits about other stars experience an accelerated tidal evolution, and can either merge with their parent planet or reach the limit of dynamical instability within a Hubble time. We review the…

Recent results have shown that many of the known extrasolar planetary systems contain regions which are stable for massless test particles. We examine the possibility that Saturn-mass planets exist in these systems, just below the detection…

Studying the habitability, internal structure and composition of exoplanets is crucial for understanding their potential to sustain life beyond our solar system. Characterizing planetary structures and atmospheric evolution provides…

Several mechanisms have been proposed to explain the formation process of satellite systems, and relatively large moons are thought to be born in circumplanetary disks. Making a single-moon system is known to be more difficult than…

The presence of rings and moons around exoplanets is likely to be one of the next great discoveries in exoplanet research. Using theories developed for the Solar System, we explore the possibility of coupled ring-moon cycles around…

The Kepler Mission has discovered thousands of exoplanets and revolutionized our understanding of their population. This large, homogeneous catalog of discoveries has enabled rigorous studies of the occurrence rate of exoplanets and…