This project will help determine if habitable exomoons are detectable using our current observatories such as the James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble, or help us to decide what necessary features and how big a telescope is needed in order to detect these small bodies outside of our Solar System.
As explained in detail in Project Plan PXT992, the project will span over 11 weeks from the 17th June 2024 and will consist of 4 main aims:
- Filtering the public archive from NASA's Exoplanet Archive - https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/TblView/nph-tblView?app=ExoTbls&config=PSCompPars - in order to see gas giant planets (>0.5 Jupiter mass) within the circumstellar habitable zone of their respective stars.
- Building simulation frameworks which will utilise the planet and star parameters from the filtered archive to create simulations of these systems and create possible light curves of a simulated moon within them to detect changes.
- Building a detectability test to test the effectiveness of our capability in detecting the moons with light curves and assess if any particular conditions are needed, as well as figuring out parameters which may be suitable for detecting moons with.
- Using these frameworks and detectability tests, shortlisted candidates will be created in which the detection of moons around these exoplanets are theoretically possible with current (or near-future) technology and thus could be candidates for possible follow-up observations.
Since the archive is too large to upload on GitHub, download the table from the link above as a CSV file by clicking: download table → check download all columns and download all rows → download table → save to a easily accessible location (locally) → ✂️ cut and 📋 paste the first table of information into another sheet for reference later → move the table of exoplanets to the top → save 💾. Now it is ready to be imported to your code!
This is project is a work-in-progress aiming to be completed come September 2024. If you feel the need to contribute or throw 'pointers' at me please feel free to do so - It'll be much appreciated!