Related papers: Cronomoons: origin, dynamics, and light-curve feat…
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…
Two decades ago, astronomers began detecting planets orbiting stars other than our Sun, so-called exoplanets. Since that time, the rate of detections and the sensitivity to ever-smaller planets has improved dramatically with several…
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…
Context: The Solar System giant planets harbour a wide variety of moons. Moons around exoplanets are plausibly similarly abundant, even though most of them are likely too small to be easily detectable with modern instruments. Moons are…
Confirmation of the first exomoon remains elusive. Although several exomoon candidates exist around single stars, there are currently no candidates around circumbinary planets (CBPs). Most circumbinary planets are thought to form far from…
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…
The detection of moons orbiting extrasolar planets ("exomoons") has now become feasible. Once they are discovered in the circumstellar habitable zone, questions about their habitability will emerge. Exomoons are likely to be tidally locked…
Close-in giant planets represent the most significant evidence of planetary migration. If large exomoons form around migrating giant planets which are more stable (e.g. those in the Solar System), what happens to these moons after migration…
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…
Recently Kipping (2021) identified the so-called "exomoon corridor", a potentially powerful new tool for identifying possible exomoon hosts, enabled by the observation that fully half of all planets hosting an exomoon will exhibit transit…
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…
Recently, Teachey, Kipping, and Schmitt (2018) reported the detection of a candidate exomoon, tentatively designated Kepler-1625b I, around a giant planet in the Kepler field. The candidate exomoon would be about the size and mass of…
An intriguing question in the context of dynamics arises: Could a moon possess a moon itself? Such a configuration does not exist in the Solar System, although this may be possible in theory. Kollmeier et al. (2019) determined the critical…
Exomoons orbiting terrestrial or super-terrestrial exoplanets have not yet been discovered; their possible existence and properties are therefore still an unresolved question. Here we explore the collisional formation of exomoons through…
The field of exoplanetary science has experienced a recent surge of new systems that is largely due to the precision photometry provided by the Kepler mission. The latest discoveries have included compact planetary systems in which the…
This article explores the different formation scenarios of the Kronian moons system in the context of a highly dissipative Saturn, with the objective of identifying the most likely of these scenarios. First, we review the diversity of…
Context. The extremely low density of several long-period exoplanets in mature systems is still unexplained -- with HIP 41378 f being archetypical of this category. It has been proposed that such planets could actually have normal densities…
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 Sun-like stars, which makes their putative moons interesting for studies of…
The satellites of extrasolar planets (exomoons) have been recently proposed as astrobiological targets. Since giant planets in the habitable zone are thought to have migrated there, it is possible that they may have captured a former…
In recent years, there has been interest in Earth-like exoplanets in the habitable zones of low mass stars ($\sim0.1-0.6\,M_\odot$). Furthermore, it has been argued that a large moon may be important for stabilizing conditions on a planet…