English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Occultation light curves of exomoons may give information on their albedo andhence indicate the presence of ice cover on the surface. Icy moons might havesubsurface oceans thus these may potentially be habitable. The objective of ourpaper is to determine whether next generation telescopes will be capable ofalbedo estimations for icy exomoons using their occultation light curves. Thesuccess of the measurements depends on the depth of the moon's occultation inthe light curve and on the sensitivity of the used instruments. We appliedsimple calculations for different stellar masses in the V and J photometricbands, and compared the flux drop caused by the moon's occultation and theestimated photon noise of next generation missions with 5 $\sigma$ confidence.We found that albedo estimation by this method is not feasible for moons ofsolar-like stars, but small M dwarfs are better candidates for suchmeasurements. Our calculations in the J photometric band show that E-ELTMICADO's photon noise is just about 4 ppm greater than the flux differencecaused by a 2 Earth-radii icy satellite in a circular orbit at the snowline ofan 0.1 stellar mass star. However, considering only photon noise underestimatesthe real expected noise, because other noise sources, such as CCD read-out anddark signal become significant in the near infrared measurements. Hence weconclude that occultation measurements with next generation missions are fartoo challenging, even in the case of large, icy moons at the snowline of smallM dwarfs. We also discuss the role of the parameters that were neglected in thecalculations, e.g. inclination, eccentricity, orbiting direction of the moon.We predict that the first albedo estimations of exomoons will probably be madefor large icy moons around the snowline of M4 -- M9 type main sequence stars.

Possibility for albedo estimation of exomoons: Why should we care about M dwarfs?