Related papers: Hunting exomoons with a kilometric baseline interf…
Exoplanets, short for `extra solar planets', are planets outside our solar system. They are objects with masses less than around 15 Jupiter-masses that orbit stars other than the Sun. They are small enough so they can not burn deuterium in…
Despite the discovery of thousands of exoplanets, no exomoons have been detected so far. We test a recently developed method for exomoon search, the orbital sampling effect (OSE), using the full exoplanet photometry from the Kepler Space…
Because of the recent technological advances, the key technologies needed for precision space optical astrometry are now in hand. The Microarcsecond Astrometry Probe (MAP) mission concept is designed to find 1 Earth mass planets at 1AU…
Context: Detecting moons around exoplanets is a major goal of current and future observatories. Moons are suspected to influence rocky exoplanet habitability, and gaseous exoplanets in stellar habitable zones could harbour abundant and…
We demonstrate the ability of existing and planned telescopes, on the ground and in space, to directly image tidally heated exomoons orbiting gas-giant exoplanets. Tidally heated exomoons can plausibly be far more luminous than their host…
Though efforts to detect them have been made with a variety of methods, no technique can claim a successful, confirmed detection of a moon outside the Solar System yet. Moon detection methods are restricted in capability to detecting moons…
Previously, planets have been detected only in the Milky Way galaxy. Here, we show that quasar microlensing provides a means to probe extragalactic planets in the lens galaxy, by studying the microlensing properties of emission close to the…
By aiming to find and characterise dozens of habitable exoplanets through the technique of nulling interferometry, the LIFE space mission will produce transformational science. One of the key parameters for such an interferometric mission…
Very Long Baseline Interferometry is capable of measuring the gravitational delay caused by the Sun and planet gravitational fields. The post-Newtonian parameter $\gamma$ is now estimated with accuracy of $\sigma_{\gamma}=2\cdot 10^{-4}$…
Satellites of extrasolar planets, or exomoons, are on the frontier of detectability using current technologies and theoretical constraints should be considered in their search. In this Letter, we apply theoretical constraints of orbital…
Microlensing is the most promising method to study the statistical frequency of extra-solar planets orbiting typical (random) stars in the Milky Way, even those several kiloparsecs from Earth. The lensing zone corresponds to orbital…
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 Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer (LBTI) is a strategic instrument of the LBT designed for high-sensitivity, high-contrast, and high-resolution infrared (1.5-13 $\mu$m) imaging of nearby planetary systems. To carry out a wide…
From the list of 2321 transiting planet candidates announced by the Kepler Mission, we select seven targets with favorable properties for the capacity to dynamically maintain an exomoon and present a detectable signal. These seven…
Evidence for exocomets, icy bodies in extrasolar planetary systems, has rapidly increased over the past decade. Volatiles are detected through the gas that exocomets release as they collide and grind down within their natal belts, or as…
The extraordinary astrometric accuracy of radio interferometry creates an important and unique opportunity for the discovery and characterization of exo-planets. Currently, the Very Long Baseline Array can routinely achieve better than 100…
The discovery of exoplanets has both focused and expanded the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. The consideration of Earth as an exoplanet, the knowledge of the orbital parameters of individual exoplanets, and our new understanding…
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…
We outline a concept for OWL-Moon, a 50-100m aperture telescope located on the surface of the Moon, to address three major areas in astronomy, namely the detection of biosignatures on habitable exoplanets, the geophysics of exoplanets, and…
We address three major questions in astronomy, namely the detection of biosignatures on habitable exoplanets, the geophysics of exoplanets and cosmology. To achieve this goal, two requirements are needed. First a very large aperture to…