Related papers: Exploring formation scenarios for the exomoon cand…
In the solar system, moons largely exceed planets in number. The Kepler database has been shown to be sensitive to exomoon detection down to the mass of Mars, but the first search has been unsuccessful. Here, we use a particles-in-cell code…
The satellites of Jupiter are thought to form in a circumplanetary disc. Here we address their formation and orbital evolution with a population synthesis approach, by varying the dust-to-gas ratio, the disc dispersal timescale and the dust…
The hundreds of exoplanets that have been discovered in the past two decades offer a new perspective on planetary structure. Instead of being the archetypal examples of planets, those of our Solar System are merely possible outcomes of…
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…
We re-evaluate the outer edge of orbital stability for possible exomoons orbiting the radial velocity planet discovered in the HD 23079 system. In this system, a solar-type star hosts a Jupiter-mass planet in a nearly circular orbit in the…
Planetary satellites are an integral part of the heirarchy of planetary systems. Here we make two predictions concerning their formation. First, primordial satellites, which have an array of distinguishing characteristics, form only around…
Putative natural massive satellites (exomoons) has gained increasing attention, where they orbit Jupiter-like planets within the habitable zone of their host main sequence star. An exomoon is expected to move within the equatorial plane of…
Kepler has found hundreds of Neptune-size (2-6 R_Earth) planet candidates within 0.5 AU of their stars. The nature of the vast majority of these planets is not known because their masses have not been measured. Using theoretical models of…
Submoons, moons orbiting other moons, may be exotic environments capable of hosting extraterrestrial life. We extend previous studies to revise the maximum lifetime of these objects due to planetary, lunar and sublunar tidal migration.…
The existence of a Radius Valley in the Kepler size distribution stands as one of the most important observational constraints to understand the origin and composition of exoplanets with radii between that of Earth and Neptune. The goal of…
The discovery of thousands of planetary systems by Kepler has demonstrated that planets are ubiquitous. However, a major challenge has been the confirmation of Kepler planet candidates, many of which still await confirmation. One of the…
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 Neptunian satellite system is unusual. The major satellites of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus are all in prograde, low-inclination orbits. Neptune on the other hand, has the fewest satellites, and most of the system's mass is within one…
Recent astronomical observations, in particular from the Kepler and TESS missions and their related follow-ups, have revealed an abundance of exoplanets in the size range between Neptune (4 Earth radii) and Earth (1 Earth radii ), as well…
Circumplanetary particle disks would be created in the late stage of planetary formation either by impacts of planetary bodies or disruption of satellites or passing bodies, and satellites can be formed by accretion of disk particles…
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…
We present evidence of tidally-driven inspiral in the Kepler-1658 (KOI-4) system, which consists of a giant planet (1.1$R_\mathrm{J}$, 5.9$M_\mathrm{J}$) orbiting an evolved host star (2.9$R_\odot$, 1.5$M_\odot$). Using transit timing…
The orbits of close-in exoplanets provide clues to their formation and evolutionary history. Many close-in exoplanets likely formed far out in their protoplanetary disks and migrated to their current orbits, perhaps via high-eccentricity…
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…
Satellites around substellar companions are a heterogeneous class of objects with a variety of different formation histories. Focusing on potentially detectable satellites around exoplanets and brown dwarfs, we might expect to find objects…