With about 4,000 planet candidates from the Kepler Space Telescope data to analyze so far, astronomers are busy trying to figure out questions about habitability. Look at our own solar system, however, and there’s a big gap in the information we need. Most of the planets have moons, so surely at least some of what Kepler finds would have them as well. Tracking down these tiny worlds, however, is a challenge.
A new paper in the journal Astrobiology goes over this mostly unexplored field of extrasolar research. The scientists do an extensive literature review of what is supposed about moons beyond the Solar System, and they add intriguing new results.
The study was supported in part by the NASA Astrobiology Institute’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory and the National Science Foundation.
