And here are some data about the sizes of each planet in Jupiter masses:

Gliese 876c: 0.56
HD 92788b: 3.86
HD 16175b: 4.5
HD 20367b: 1.07
HD 142415b: 1.62
HD 142b: 1
HD 108874b: 1.36 (that solar system also features a Jupiter sized planet 2.5 times as far away from the sun - maybe helping in the defence of a possible moon with life)
HD 150706b: 1
HD 190228b: 4.99

So from the data above i would say when we get those planets with a size like:

HD 92788b
HD 16175b
HD 190228b

... as possible planets with a Earth-sized moon around them.

Is the calculation of how big a moon typically would be if you for instance double the size of the planet? I mean, taking a planet with 2 Jupiter-masses, would that mean that it is likely we would get a 2 Ganymedes-masses moon around that planet or isn't it a linear calculation?

BTW: Would it be easier or harder to find a Earth-sized moon around a planet than a Earth-sized planet around a star if we would search just as many of each type? I'm not talking about in which situation there are most Earth-sized planets/moons, but what future telescopes like Kepler would find easier finding.

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"The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." (Ernest Hemmingway)

If the moons and the planet condense from the same proto-Jovian disk then there has to be some relationship between the masses, but other factors could have a substantial effect. Someone here referenced a paper that concluded that the satellites of a planet that condense with it should be about 1/10000th (?) the mass of the planet. <calculates mentally> the regular moons of Jupiter would add up to about 1/5000th the mass of Jupiter, and Saturn similarly, so that sounds about right. By that token an Earth mass satellite would be unlikely around anything smaller than a brown dwarf. A Mars sized body though wouldn't surprise around a big Jovian.

As to which are easier to find, I dunno. But there's talk of finding exomoons around transiting planets.

I estimated the bolometric luminosities by applying the Stefan–Boltzmann law to the temperatures (and radii) on exoplanets.eu. The approximation probably gets ratty for cool M dwarfs. Another way would be to have looked up the spectral types in a bolometric correction table. That was too tedious. Note that at least one prominent website devoted to the habitability of exoplanets uses uncorrected visual luminosities resulting in incorrect conclusions (such as Gl581c being cooler than Earth).

There are no articles, just rumors circulating... most I've learned from Sigurðsson's blog, he has an access to the extrasolar planet conferences where these things have been mentioned.

Well, looks like the 1.7 Re planet has been mentioned in a CoRoT press release article from May:

Since the CoRoT team seems to follow closely ESA's PR tradition, don't expect to hear about it anytime soon.

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Indeed I was. That's why I specified "we only have data on the Jovians they orbit."

It's entirely plausible that there's at least one habitable moon orbiting an exoplanet we've already discovered. Somewhere in our catalogues there could be a hidden gem where we actually have the coordinates, distance, distance from sun, and data on the planet that moon orbits.

We just don't know it yet because our instruments can't resolve moons around exoplanets yet.

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Actually there is a possibility of one system thats been discovered with two jovians in it's stars Habital zone, each of which could sport habitable moons.

Not saying they will, but its certainly possible.

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I just saw Hayley's comet, she waved, Said "why you always running in place? Even the man in the moon disappeared, Somewhere in the stratosphere" - Shinedown

http://worldsofothersuns.home.comcast.net/

As a point of interest does anyone have any details on the location of WASP-12B? I have been trying to find its RA and Dec online, but to no avail. I have its (presumably approximate) distance, but not its whereabouts.

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It doesn't seem to be public information yet.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

Does that happen a lot? Do they think someone will steal the discovery or something?

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2008 exoplanet discovery count, 42 so far, gives us the second best year, but this is 20 short of last years final result of 62. I assume some diminishing returns was expected; it is a law.

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"The mean of five measures each of which is not worth a dang (sinc), has a maximum value of only five dangs (sinc)". Heber Curtis

"(sinc)" - spelling is not correct (in its orginal form) :)

Nitpick 1: Year's not over!
Nitpick 2: Diminishing returns only if effort put in is equal to, or more than last years.

(Sorry! Couldn't resist)

p.s 42 is a good number though... and are they qualitatively better than last years? Closer to Earth characteristics I mean..

My guess is that the "big guns" are not up there yet. Then, we will back to more of an exponential growth in the count.

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The mean of five measures each of which is not worth a dang (sinc), has a maximum value of only five dangs (sinc)". Heber Curtis

"(sinc)" - spelling is not correct (in its orginal form) :)

How fortunate we are, that we can be disappointed by a possible non-exponential growth in the number of planets discovered beyond our solar system.

Whereas just a dozen-odd years ago we'd have to be disappointed by the continued lack of discovered planets outside our solar system...

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Has the CoRoT team ever announced a planet without RV confirmation? My impression was that they had originally planned to but probably ran into too many false positives. OTOH it's very, very strange to mention something like this in a press release then never follow up.

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USA Today: Earth-like planet in Epsilon Eridani? It is logical, Captain

NASA Spitzer Telescope Mission News: Closest Planetary System Hosts Two Asteroid Belts

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0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 ...

The paper Epsilon Eridani's Planetary Debris Disk: Structure and Dynamics based on Spitzer and CSO Observations is on arxiv.

The published exoplanet orbit is not compatible with the observed disk structure. Perhaps the orbit modellers need to redo their optimization with the penalties biassed to two planets in nearly circular orbits. I don't know if the state of the art has advanced greatly, but it used to be the case that there was sometimes ambiguity between, for example, solutions with two planets in low eccentricity orbits and one planet in an eccentric ("loopy" seems to be the media friendly word) orbit.

Five boring gas giants and a brown dwarf -- The HARPS search for southern extra-solar planets XVII. Six long-period giant planets around BD -17 0063, HD 20868, HD 73267, HD 131664, HD 145377, HD 153950.

Isn't it funny that a report that a few years ago would have been monumental, is now boring.

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All moderation in purple

Yeah, great Just as the number of exoplanet discoveries per year is exponential, so is our expectation about the exoplanets - in a way great, in a way sad. What i mean by this is when i think about the future in all astronomy aspects aswell as engineering feats aspects, i can only say that we unfortunately take things for granted too soon. One day i was hoping to hear news about water on Mars or exoplanets just smaller than Jupiter - today we have found both things but are already getting too easy about it and just looking forward to the next big thing. If only i could enjoy our discoveries some more

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"The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." (Ernest Hemmingway)

Such is the hedonic treadmill of progress. Actually the five (or six, exoplanet finders like to count brown dwarfs as planets) gas giants are slightly interesting in that they are cool (a ~3AU) rather than hot (a ~0.05AU). Their orbits are all quite loopy, which could be seen as part of an emerging consensus that stellar systems like ours (circular orbits, an inner system free of gas giants) are rare. This might help explain the apparent lack of aliens.

Low Mass Companions for Five Solar-Type Stars from the Magellan Planet Search Program. Note the lowest mass of these low mass companions is 1.2M_jup. Fig.9 is a little disturbing.

Hubble Announces A Major Extrasolar Planet Discovery

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
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Oh my god, i can't wait for this. Great news, thx

A couple of questions:

1) If we assume that the magnificant about this particular discovery has to do with nothing else but size, what could we expect from Hubble? I mean, Hubble has a limit, and i've never consider it the best exoplanet searcher.

2) Has this even happened before that they call a press conferance about an exoplanet discovery?

3) Since Hubble isn't the mail exoplanet searcher we have, could it be that they are just calling the press conferance because it is an amazing achievement for Hubble or can we expect it to be an amazing thing for exoplanet searching as a whole?



I will be streaming the conferance live - i guess you can do that from nasa.gov...

Are you guys in for a bet for what will be announced to see who is closer?

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Can somebody decipher this?

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

Maybe...

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=29144

That has to be it.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

51 exoplanets found thus far in 2008... and counting.

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The mean of five measures each of which is not worth a dang (sinc), has a maximum value of only five dangs (sinc)". Heber Curtis

"(sinc)" - spelling is not correct (in its orginal form) :)

Damn, i read it as tuesday instead of thursday - and i barely could wait until tuesday in the first place

So the big thing is that it is a direct observation of an exoplanet?

Size: 1.6 - 3.4 M(jup)
Distance from parent star: 18AU

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"The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." (Ernest Hemmingway)

That's what I'm guessing, but maybe something else was found on the follow-up?

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"Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph" -- Conan

Right.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
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