Search for Exomoons and Planetary Rings around Extrasolar Planets Using CoRoT and Kepler Space Telescopes

• Grant number: 10/17814-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: March 01, 2011
• End date: August 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Astronomy
• Principal Investigator: Adriana Benetti Marques Valio
• Grantee: Luis Ricardo Moretto Tusnski
• Host Institution: Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE). São José dos Campos , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 06/50654-3 - Investigation of high energy and plasma astrophysics phenomena: theory, observation, and numerical simulations, AP.TEM
• Associated scholarship(s): 13/11486-1 - Search for Exomoons using timing variations in planetary transits, BE.EP.DR

Abstract

A model that simulates the transit of a planet in from of its host star was previously developed during the master program. It is possible to include moons and rings in orbit around this planet. The result of the model is the light curve of these events. This model has shown that transits of exomoons or rings are detectable using high precision photometry, within certain limits. For the doctorate thesis, the light curves of the space satellites such as CoRoT and Kepler will be analyzing, in search of moons and planetary rings around these extra-solar planets. Besides the photometry, measurements of transit duration and time of central crossing will also be performed, searching for the small variations caused by the movement of the planet around the center-of-mass of the planet-moon system.