Kavli Affiliate: Andrew Vanderburg
| First 5 Authors: Mary Anne Limbach, Jacob Lustig-Yaeger, Andrew Vanderburg, Johanna M. Vos, Rene Heller
| Summary:
The highest priority recommendation of the Astro2020 Decadal Survey for
space-based astronomy was the construction of an observatory capable of
characterizing habitable worlds. In this paper series we explore the
detectability of and interference from exomoons and exorings serendipitously
observed with the proposed Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) as it seeks to
characterize exoplanets, starting in this manuscript with Earth-Moon analog
mutual events. Unlike transits, which only occur in systems viewed near
edge-on, shadow (i.e., solar eclipse) and lunar eclipse mutual events occur in
almost every star-planet-moon system. The cadence of these events can vary
widely from ~yearly to multiple events per day, as was the case in our younger
Earth-Moon system. Leveraging previous space-based (EPOXI) lightcurves of a
Moon transit and performance predictions from the LUVOIR-B concept, we derive
the detectability of Moon analogs with HWO. We determine that Earth-Moon
analogs are detectable with observation of ~2-20 mutual events for systems
within 10pc, and larger moons should remain detectable out to 20pc. We explore
the extent to which exomoon mutual events can mimic planet features and
weather. We find that HWO wavelength coverage in the near-IR, specifically in
the 1.4 micron water band where large moons can outshine their host planet,
will aid in differentiating exomoon signals from exoplanet variability.
Finally, we predict that exomoons formed through collision processes akin to
our Moon are more likely to be detected in younger systems, where shorter
orbital periods and favorable geometry enhance the probability and frequency of
mutual events.
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