Abstract

Exomoons represent a crucial missing puzzle piece in our efforts to understand extrasolar planetary systems. To address this deficiency, we here describe an exomoon survey of 70 cool, giant transiting exoplanet candidates found by Kepler. We identify only one exhibiting a moon-like signal that passes a battery of vetting tests: Kepler-1708 b. We show that Kepler-1708 b is a statistically validated Jupiter-sized planet orbiting a Sun-like quiescent star at 1.6 au. The signal of the exomoon candidate, Kepler-1708 b-i, is a 4.8σ effect and is persistent across different instrumental detrending methods, with a 1% false-positive probability via injection–recovery. Kepler-1708 b-i is ~2.6 Earth radii and is located in an approximately coplanar orbit at ~12 planetary radii from its ~1.6 au Jupiter-sized host. Future observations will be necessary to validate or reject the candidate.

Highlights

  • Exomoons represent a crucial missing puzzle piece in our efforts to understand extrasolar planetary systems

  • After the analysis and removal of long-term systematic trends in the Kepler photometry, three targets were rejected as being of unacceptably poor quality

  • Light-curve detrending was performed using four different algorithms applied to two photometric reductions, with the results cross-compared and averaged (‘method marginalized’), to ensure a robust correction against algorithmic choices (Methods)

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Summary

Introduction

Exomoons represent a crucial missing puzzle piece in our efforts to understand extrasolar planetary systems. To address this deficiency, we here describe an exomoon survey of 70 cool, giant transiting exoplanet candidates found by Kepler. We show that Kepler-1708 b is a statistically validated Jupiter-sized planet orbiting a Sun-like quiescent star at 1.6 au. In the last three decades, more than 4,000 planets around stars other than the Sun, exoplanets, have been discovered These worlds display remarkable diversity, from highly eccentric Jupiters[1] to compact, coplanar systems of terrestrial planets[2]. The observational bias of transit surveys[10] leads to an under-representation of long-period, cool planets—precisely the type of planet where moons are thought to be most likely due to dynamical considerations[11,12]. The Jupiter-sized planets amongst these are of particular interest, as satellite formation is thought to be a natural outcome of how such planets form[18]

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