Next Generation of Telescopes or Dynamics Required to Determine if Exo-Moons have Prograde or Retrograde Orbits

Abstract

We survey the methods proposed in the literature for detecting moons of extrasolar planets in terms of their ability to distinguish between prograde and retrograde moon orbits, an important tracer of moon formation channel. We find that most moon detection methods, in particular, sensitive methods for detecting moons of transiting planets, cannot observationally distinguishing prograde and retrograde moon orbits. The prograde and retrograde cases can only be distinguished where dynamical evolution of the orbit due to e.g. three body effects is detectable, where one of the two cases is dynamically unstable or where new observational facilities which can implement a technique capable of differentiating the two cases, come on line. In particular, directly imaged planets are promising targets as repeated spectral and photometric measurements, required to determine moon orbit direction, could also be conducted with the primary interest of characterising the planet itself.

arXiv comment8 pages, 2 figures, accepted by ApJL

References in corpus (31)

• Optical Images of an Exosolar Planet 25 Light Years from Earth
• The orbital motion, absolute mass, and high-altitude winds of exoplanet HD209458b
• A Closely-Packed System of Low-Mass, Low-Density Planets Transiting Kepler-11
• Detection of Carbon Monoxide and Water Absorption Lines in an Exoplanet Atmosphere
• Transit timing effects due to an exomoon
• KOI-126: A Triply-Eclipsing Hierarchical Triple with Two Low-Mass Stars
• Stability of Satellites Around Close-in Extrasolar Giant Planets
• Transit timing effects due to an exomoon II
• The Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler (HEK): I. Description of a New Observational Project
• A Sub-Earth-Mass Moon Orbiting a Gas Giant Primary or a High Velocity Planetary System in the Galactic Bulge
• Origin of the Different Architectures of the Jovian and Saturnian Satellite Systems
• Possibility of a photometric detection of "exomoons"
• High-Resolution Simulations of a Moon-Forming Impact and Post-Impact Evolution
• Phase Functions and Light Curves of Wide Separation Extrasolar Giant Planets
• On the Direct Imaging of Tidally Heated Exomoons
• Detecting companions to extrasolar planets using mutual events
• On the Feasibility of Detecting Satellites of Extrasolar Planets via Microlensing
• New developments for modern celestial mechanics. I. General coplanar three-body systems. Application to exoplanets
• Detecting extrasolar moons akin to solar system satellites with an orbital sampling effect
• Prospects for High-Precision Pulsar Timing
• Signals of exomoons in averaged light curves of exoplanets
• Obliquity evolution of extrasolar terrestrial planets
• Methods for exomoon characterisation: combining transit photometry and the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect
• Microlensing Detections of Moons of Exoplanets
• Phase light curves for extrasolar Jupiters and Saturns
• Extrasolar Binary Planets I: Formation by tidal capture during planet-planet scattering
• Possibility of Detecting Moons of Pulsar Planets Through Time-of-Arrival Analysis
• Accretion of Solid Materials onto Circumplanetary Disks from Protoplanetary Disks
• Scattered Light from Close-in Extrasolar Planets: Prospects of Detection with the MOST Satellite
• Stellar wobble caused by a binary system: Can it really be mistaken as an extra-solar planet?
• Can stellar wobble in triple systems mimic a planet?

Cited by in corpus (10)

• An alternative interpretation of the exomoon candidate signal in the combined Kepler and Hubble data of Kepler-1625
• How to determine an exomoon's sense of orbital motion
• Revisiting the exomoon candidate signal around Kepler-1625b
• Predictable patterns in planetary transit timing variations and transit duration variations due to exomoons
• The nature of the giant exomoon candidate Kepler-1625 b-i
• Modeling the Orbital Sampling Effect of Extrasolar Moons
• Transits of Inclined Exomoons - Hide and Seek and an Application to Kepler-1625
• Exomoon indicators in high-precision transit light curves
• Special cases : moons, rings, comets, trojans
• Photometric Search for Exomoons by using Convolutional Neural Networks