On the detection of Exomoons: A search in Kepler data for the orbital sampling effect and the scatter peak

Abstract

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 Telescope. The OSE is applied to phase-folded transits, for which we present a framework to detect false positives, and discuss four candidates which pass several of our tests. Using numerical simulations, we inject exomoon signals into real Kepler data and retrieve them, showing that under favorable conditions, exomoons can be found with Kepler and the OSE method. In addition, we super-stack a large sample of Kepler planets to search for the average exomoon OSE and the accompanying increase in noise, the scatter peak. We find a significant OSE-like signal, which might indicate the presence of moons, for planets with 35d<P<80d, having an average dip per planet of 6+-2ppm, corresponding to a moon radius of 2120 +330 -370km for the average star radius of 1.24R_Sun in this sample.

arXiv commentApJ accepted. 24 pages, 26 Figures. Supplementary material at this http URL http://jaekle.info/ose/

References in corpus (38)

• Analytic Lightcurves for Planetary Transit Searches
• The false positive rate of Kepler and the occurrence of planets
• Validation of Kepler's Multiple Planet Candidates. III: Light Curve Analysis & Announcement of Hundreds of New Multi-planet Systems
• Masses, Radii, and Orbits of Small Kepler Planets: The Transition from Gaseous to Rocky Planets
• Tidal Decay of Close Planetary Orbits
• The Exoplanet Orbit Database
• Initial Characteristics of Kepler Short Cadence Data
• Stability of Satellites Around Close-in Extrasolar Giant Planets
• All Six Planets Known to Orbit Kepler-11 Have Low Densities
• Instrument Performance in Kepler's First Months
• KOI-142, the King of Transit Variations, is a Pair of Planets near the 2:1 Resonance
• Transit Detectability of Ring Systems Around Extrasolar Giant Planets
• Photometric Variability in Kepler Target Stars. III. Comparison with the Sun on Different Timescales
• Modeling giant extrasolar ring systems in eclipse and the case of J1407b: sculpting by exomoons?
• On the detectability of habitable exomoons with Kepler-class photometry
• Kepler-20: A Sun-like Star with Three Sub-Neptune Exoplanets and Two Earth-size Candidates
• The Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler (HEK): II. Analysis of Seven Viable Satellite-Hosting Planet Candidates
• Exomoon habitability constrained by energy flux and orbital stability
• SOPHIE velocimetry of Kepler transit candidates XII. KOI-1257 b: a highly eccentric three-month period transiting exoplanet
• The Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler (HEK): IV. A Search for Moons around Eight M-Dwarfs
• The Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler (HEK): III. The First Search for an Exomoon around a Habitable-Zone Planet
• A novel method for identifying exoplanetary rings
• Detecting extrasolar moons akin to solar system satellites with an orbital sampling effect
• Post-Capture Evolution of Potentially Habitable Exomoons
• Transit Model of Planets with Moon and Ring System
• Parallaxes of Star Forming Regions in the Outer Spiral Arm of the Milky Way
• Habitability of Exomoons at the Hill or Tidal Locking Radius
• Kepler423b: a half-Jupiter mass planet transiting a very old solar-like star
• SOPHIE velocimetry of Kepler transit candidates. XIII. KOI-189 B and KOI-686 B: two very low-mass stars in long-period orbits
• How to determine an exomoon's sense of orbital motion
• Massive Satellites of Close-In Gas Giant Exoplanets
• The detectability of habitable exomoons with Kepler
• CoRoT 101186644: A transiting low-mass dense M-dwarf on an eccentric 20.7-day period orbit around a late F-star
• How to Weigh a Star Using a Moon
• The Effect of Planetary Illumination on Climate Modelling of Earthlike Exomoons
• The Possible Moon of Kepler-90g is a False Positive
• Observation of flux tube crossings in the solar wind
• Discovery of Multiple High-Velocity Narrow Circumstellar Na I D Lines in Nova V1280 Sco

Cited by in corpus (37)

• Wotan: Comprehensive time-series de-trending in Python
• HEK VI: On the Dearth of Galilean Analogs in Kepler and the Exomoon Candidate Kepler-1625b I
• The astrophysics of visible-light orbital phase curves in the space age
• No Evidence for Lunar Transit in New Analysis of Hubble Space Telescope Observations of the Kepler-1625 System
• A statistical search for a population of Exo-Trojans in the Kepler dataset
• Revisiting the exomoon candidate signal around Kepler-1625b
• Detecting Exomoons Via Doppler Monitoring of Directly Imaged Exoplanets
• On the Detection of Exomoons Transiting Isolated Planetary-Mass Objects
• 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
• Large Exomoons unlikely around Kepler-1625 b and Kepler-1708 b
• TOI-2257 b: A highly eccentric long-period sub-Neptune transiting a nearby M dwarf
• Modeling the Orbital Sampling Effect of Extrasolar Moons
• Application of Orbital Stability and Tidal Migration Constraints for Exomoon Candidates
• Exomoon Climate Models with the Carbonate-Silicate Cycle and Viscoelastic Tidal Heating
• Exploring formation scenarios for the exomoon candidate Kepler 1625b I
• On The Feasibility of Exomoon Detection Via Exoplanet Phase Curve Spectral Contrast
• Formation of Exomoons: A Solar System Perspective
• On the Detection of Extrasolar Moons and Rings
• Transit Origami: A Method to Coherently Fold Exomoon Transits in Time Series Photometry
• The TEMPO Survey I: Predicting Yields of the Transiting Exosatellites, Moons, and Planets from a 30-day Survey of Orion with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
• Stability and detectability of exomoons orbiting HIP 41378 f, a temperate Jovian planet with an anomalously low apparent density
• Exomoons in Systems with a Strong Perturber: Applications to $\alpha$ Cen AB
• Traces of exomoons in computed flux and polarization phase curves of starlight reflected by exoplanets
• Exploring exomoon atmospheres with an idealized general circulation model
• Consequences of dynamically unstable moons in extrasolar systems
• Refraction in exoplanet atmospheres: Photometric signatures, implications for transmission spectroscopy, and search in Kepler data
• Identifying Potential Exomoon Signals with Convolutional Neural Networks
• On the Stability of Additional Moons Orbiting Kepler-1625 b
• Updated Studies on Exomoons in the HD 23079 System
• Binary planet formation by gas-assisted encounters of planetary embryos
• Detection of exomoons in simulated light curves with a regularized convolutional neural network
• The Dynamics of Co-orbital Giant Exomoons -- Applications for the Kepler-1625 b and Kepler-1708 b Satellite Systems
• Searching for technosignatures in exoplanetary systems with current and future missions
• Why exomoons must be rare?
• The spectral Petersen diagram as a new tool to map pulsation modes in variable stars
• Special cases : moons, rings, comets, trojans