Six New Exomoons? Not So Fast…

A team of astronomers recently announced six new exomoon candidates, capturing the headlines and sparking plenty of excitement. Exomoons have been broadly eluded astronomers for many years, so this is a big deal.... if true. Today, new work performing an independent analysis of these signals is presented in a Cool Worlds exclusive, detailing a new paper by Prof Kipping.

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Thank-you to Tom Widdowson, Denny Smith, Stephanie Hackley, Mark Sloan, Laura Sanborn, Kolos Kantor, Patrick Herman, Abel Aganbegyan, Claudio Bottaccini, Daniel Brunk, Douglas Daughaday, Scott Fincher, James Kindred, Andrew Jones, Jason Allen, Steven Baldwin, Jason Black, Stuart Brownlee, Shivam Chaturvedi, David Denholm, Tim Dorais, Glen Downton, Eneko Xabier, Elizondo Urrestarazu, Gordon Fulton, Sean Griffiths, Peter Halloran, John Jurcevic, Niklas Kildal, Jack Kobernick, Wes Kobernick, Valeri Kremer, Marc Lijoi, Sheri Loftin, Branden Loizides, Anatoliy Maslyanchuk, Blair Matson, Ocean Mcintyre, Laini Mitchell, Jeffrey Needle, André Pelletier, Juan Rivillas, Bret Robinson, Zenith Star, Lauren Steely, Ernest Stefan-Matyus, Mark Steven, Elena West, Barrett York, Tristan Zajonc, Preetumsingh Gowd & Shaun Kelsey.

References:

► Kipping (2020), "", ApJL, accepted

► Fox & Wiegert (2020), "Exomoon Candidates from Transit Timing VariationsSix Kepler systems with TTVs explainable by photometrically unseen exomoons", MNRAS, submitted

► Bennett et al. (2020), "A SubEarthMass Moon Orbiting a Gas Giant Primary or a High Velocity Planetary System in the Galactic Bulge", ApJ, 785, 155

► Désert et al. (2011), "The hotJupiter Kepler17bdiscovery, obliquity from stroboscopic starspots, and atmospheric characterization", ApJS, 197, 14

► ESA Exoplanet Roadmap Advisory Team (2010), "A European Roadmap for Exoplanets"

::Video clips used::

► Exomoon animation by STScI/NASA Hubble Space Telescope

► Jupiter/Saturn with moons by Kevin Hill

► Ganymede animation by NASA/USGS

► Kepler Orrey IV by Ethan Kruse

► HD 10180 animation by ESO/L. Calçada

► GJ 1214 animation by ESO/L. Calçada

► Transit animation by ESA

► Kepler animation by NASA/Kepler Mission/Dana Berry

► Planetplanet TTV animation by NASA/Kepler Mission

::Movies/TV scenes used::

► Avatar (2009) 20th Century Fox

► The Charlie Rose Show (1996) PBS

::Music::

Music used is licensed by SoundStripe.com (SS) [shorturl.at/ptBHI] or via Creative Commons (CC) Attribution License ()

► "Ion" by Indive licensed licensed under a CC Attribution license

► "The Sun is Scheduled to Come Out Tomorrow" by Chris Zabriskie licensed under a CC Attribution license

► "Waking Up" by Atlas licensed via SS