Evidence for a Large Exomoon Orbiting Kepler-1625b

Alex Teachey, David M. Kipping
(Submitted on 4 Oct 2018)

Exomoons are the natural satellites of planets orbiting stars outside our solar system, of which there are currently no confirmed examples. We present new observations of a candidate exomoon associated with Kepler-1625b using the Hubble Space Telescope to validate or refute the moon’s presence. We find evidence in favor of the moon hypothesis, based on timing deviations and a flux decrement from the star consistent with a large transiting exomoon. Self-consistent photodynamical modeling suggests that the planet is likely several Jupiter masses, while the exomoon has a mass and radius similar to Neptune. Since our inference is dominated by a single but highly precise Hubble epoch, we advocate for future monitoring of the system to check model predictions and confirm repetition of the moon-like signal.

Comments:    98 pages, 22 figures, 5 tables. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC). Select data products available at this https URL
Subjects:    Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
Journal reference:    Science Advances, Vol. 4, no. 10, eaav1784 (October 3 2018)
DOI:    10.1126/sciadv.aav1784
Cite as:    arXiv:1810.02362 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1810.02362v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Alex Teachey
[v1] Thu, 4 Oct 2018 15:09:12 GMT (14882kb,D)
https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.02362