Astrobiology

Habitable exomoons

by Alexis Brandeker

Europe/Stockholm
122:026

122:026

Description
Since the first announcement of an exoplanet around a solar-type star in 1995, more than 400 exoplanets have been discovered. Due to observational biases, few of the known planets are located in the habitable zone, and none of those are Earth-like. Unfortunately, Eart-like planets in Earth-like orbits are extremely hard to detect, and realistically we have to wait for a future space mission for such planets to be found. Earth-like moons to giant planets in the habitable zone, on the other hand, are already detectable by ongoing programmes. In this "hot topic" talk I will review the current literature on the subject, and make plausible that a discovery of the first exomoon can be expected in the very near future.