On the detectability of habitable exomoons with Kepler-class photometry finds that Kepler could detect exomoons of mass greater than 0.2M_E around Saturn-class planets in the HZ. Unfortunately, as they point out, this is considerably larger than the maximum mass of the moon of a Saturn-class planet predicted by formation models.

I think some cool new data will be obtained when the new 30 meter telescope is built in Hawaii, Mauna Kea. It will enable astronomers to detect and study light from the first stars and galaxies, analyze the formation of planets around nearby stars, and test many of the fundamental laws of physics.

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Conscious reasoning is an attempt to justify the choice after it has been made.

So what are we looking for? Moons in the habitable zones of other stars? Why the interest in the moons rather than planets?

Of course life around a planet would be interesting. If an intelligent species evolves on a moon, how would their society develop with a sun and a planet to worship?

There are a fairly large number of gas giants which have been detected in the so-called habitable zone of various stars; these gas giants would tend to prevent terrestrial planets forming within that same zone, but could possibly hold habitable moons.

I don't know about their religion, but their biology might not be very earth-like. A typical moon of a gas giant would be tidally locked, and would therefore have a day as long as its orbital period; five, ten, even twenty days might be the norm. So you would get cold, cold nights and hot, hot days.

You might also get fairly long eclipses- as much as an hour or more in certain orbits. And the giant planet would be spectacular- especially if rings are present. However the moon might orbit in the same plane as the rings, so you might barely see them - but you could see their shadows on the planet...

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