Detecting Moons Around Exoplanets

Moons in other solar systems are common in science fiction. Are they common in the universe as well? Kipping et al. are using Kepler data to find out.Categories: Daily paper summariesTags: exoplanets, Kepler, moons, observations, planetary science, simulations, transits(Click to read more...)

Paper title: The Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler (HEK): I. Description of a New Observational Project
Authors: David M. Kipping, Gáspár Á. Bakos, Lars A. Buchhave, David Nesvorny, Allan Schmitt
First author’s affiliation: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA

The Kepler mission has already made history by announcing the discovery of 33 confirmed planets, including the two Earth-size planets in the Kepler-20 system and the 2.4 Earth radius planet in the habitable zone of Kepler-22. In this paper, Kipping et al. describe an exciting new project called HEK (The Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler) to search for moons orbiting the planets around the Kepler target stars. If they find moons at the right temperature, then Kipping et al. will be able to announce the first discovery of a potentially habitable moon orbiting a planet around another star. Although habitable moons are common in science fiction, astronomers have not yet detected any moons (habitable or not) in other planetary ...