In news– Scientists have recently formulated a model to trace elusive exo-moons from James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) data.
ABout the model-
- So far, five thousand exoplanets — planets orbiting stars other than the Sun, have been discovered by using several ground-based and space telescopes such as Kepler, CoRoT, Spitzer, and Hubble space telescopes.
- However, the natural satellites or exomoon around any of these planets still remain untraced.
- The Solar system is constituted of a large number of natural satellites with various sizes and mass, and many of them influence the ambient environment of the Solar planets.
- While most exoplanets are detected through photometric transit methods, signals from exo-moons are too weak to detect mainly because of their extremely small size.
- Scientists at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics(IIA), Bangalore, an autonomous institute of the Department of Science and Technology, have demonstrated that the newly launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is sufficiently powerful to detect the transit signal of exomoons in the photometric light curves of moon hosting exoplanets.
- A professor from IIA developed an analytical model that uses the radius and orbital properties of the host planet and its moon as parameters to model the photometric transit light curve of moon-hosting exoplanets by incorporating various possible orientations of the moon-planet-star system.
- The co-alignment or non-coalignment of the orbits of the planet and the moon are used as parameters (using two angular parameters), and they can be used to model all the possible orbital alignments for a star-planet-moon system.
- According to the researchers, an exo-moon around a gas giant planet like Jupiter in the habitable zone of the host star where temperature is appropriate for water to exist in liquid state may harbour life.
- Under favourable alignment of moon-planet-star, such exomoon may also be detected by JWST.
What is exo-moon?
- An exomoon or extrasolar moon is a natural satellite that orbits an exoplanet or other non-stellar extrasolar body.
- Though exomoons are difficult to detect and confirm using current techniques,observations from missions such as Kepler have observed a number of candidates, including some that may be habitats for extraterrestrial life and one that may be a rogue planet.
- To date there are no confirmed exomoon detections.
Further reading: https://journalsofindia.com/james-webb-telescopes-first-images/
Source: PIB
