Related papers: Impossible moons -- Transit timing effects that ca…
We discuss the possibility of screening the atmosphere of exomoons for habitability. We concentrate on Earth-like satellites of extrasolar giant planets (EGP) which orbit in the Habitable Zone of their host stars. The detectability of…
Exoplanet discoveries have motivated numerous efforts to find unseen populations of exomoons, yet they have been unsuccessful. A plausible explanation is that most discovered planets are located on close-in orbits, which would make their…
Here we describe a story behind the discovery of Kepler-46, which was the first exoplanetary system detected and characterized from a method known as the transit timing variations (TTVs). The TTV method relies on the gravitational…
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…
Gravitational interactions between planets in transiting exoplanetary systems lead to variations in the times of transit that are diagnostic of the planetary masses and the dynamical state of the system. Here we show that synodic "chopping"…
A Neptune-sized exomoon candidate was recently announced by Teachey & Kipping, orbiting a 287 day gas giant in the Kepler-1625 system. However, the system is poorly characterized and needs more observations to be confirmed, with the next…
We identify a set of planetary systems observed by Kepler that merit transit timing variation (TTV) analysis given the orbital periods of transiting planets, the uncertainties for their transit times and the number of transits observed…
One of the simplest ways to identify an exoplanetary transit is to phase fold a photometric time series upon a trial period - leading to a coherent stack when using the correct value. Such phase-folded transits have become a standard data…
In this paper we investigate the detectability of a habitable-zone exomoon around various configurations of exoplanetary systems with the Kepler Mission or photometry of approximately equal quality. We calculate both the predicted transit…
Based on the light an exoplanet blocks from its host star as it passes in front of it during a transit, the mid-transit time can be determined. Periodic variations in mid-transit times can indicate another planet's gravitational influence.…
Of the few thousand discovered exoplanets, a significant number orbit in the habitable zone of their star. Many of them are gas giants lacking a rocky surface and solid water reservoirs necessary for life as we know it. The search for…
Transit Timing Variations (TTVs) can provide useful information on compact multi-planetary systems observed by transits, by putting constraints on the masses and eccentricities of the observed planets. This is especially helpful when the…
Exomoons are the natural satellites of planets orbiting stars outside our solar system, of which there are currently no confirmed examples. We present new observations of a candidate exomoon associated with Kepler-1625b using the Hubble…
We extract Transit Timing Variation (TTV) signals for 12 pairs of transiting planet candidates that are near first-order Mean Motion Resonances (MMR), using publicly available Kepler light curves (Q0-Q14). These pairs show significant…
All-sky imaging surveys have identified several dozen isolated planetary-mass objects (IPMOs), far away from any star. Here, we examine the prospects for detecting transiting moons around these objects. We expect transiting moons to be…
An exoplanet-exomoon system presents a superposition of phase curves to observers - the dominant component varies according to the planetary period, and the lesser varies according to both the planetary and the lunar period. If the spectra…
In this work, we investigate the influence of planetary tidal interactions on the transit-timing variations of short-period low-mass rocky exoplanets. For such purpose, we employ the recently-developed creep tide theory to compute…
Transit timing variations (TTVs) provide a powerful means to detect and characterise additional bodies in known planetary systems, even when they do not transit their host stars. We investigate the dynamical architecture of the HD 332231…
We derive the transit timing variations (TTVs) of two planets near a second order mean motion resonance on nearly circular orbits. We show that the TTVs of each planet are given by sinusoids with a frequency of $j n_2-(j-2)n_1$, where $j…
The highest priority recommendation of the Astro2020 Decadal Survey for space-based astronomy was the construction of an observatory capable of characterizing habitable worlds. In this paper series we explore the detectability of and…