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arXiv · 1810.02712

The habitable zone for Earthlike exomoons orbiting Kepler-1625b

Duncan Forgan
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Abstract

The recent announcement of a Neptune-sized exomoon candidate orbiting the Jupiter-sized object Kepler-1625b has forced us to rethink our assumptions regarding both exomoons and their host exoplanets. In this paper I describe calculations of the habitable zone for Earthlike exomoons in orbit of Kepler-1625b under a variety of assumptions. I find that the candidate exomoon, Kepler-1625b-i, does not currently reside within the exomoon habitable zone, but may have done so when Kepler-1625 occupied the main sequence. If it were to possess its own moon (a "moon-moon") that was Earthlike, this could potentially have been a habitable world. If other exomoons orbit Kepler-1625b, then there are a range of possible semimajor axes/eccentricities that would permit a habitable surface during the main sequence phase, while remaining dynamically stable under the perturbations of Kepler-1625b-i. This is however contingent on effective atmospheric CO$_2$ regulation.

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Duncan Forgan. 2018-10-04. The habitable zone for Earthlike exomoons orbiting Kepler-1625b. https://doi.org/10.1017/s1473550418000514

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