SERPENS

Simulating Ring Particles Emergent from Natural Satellites.

Although exomoons, natural satellites beyond our solar system, are still undetectable in direct searches with state-of-the-art instruments, their existence has been hypothesized to explain various inconsistencies in exoplanetary spectra.

For my master’s thesis, I developed a 3D test-particle Monte Carlo simulation module called SERPENS. This module is built to simulate the neutral outgassing and evolution of a satellite at multiple candidate exoplanet-exomoon systems to provide a number density and a line-of-sight column density map of the evolving particle environment.

Our results demonstrate how exomoons similar to Io, referred to as exo-Ios, can affect line-of-sight column densities depending on the phase of the exomoon at the time of observation. Thus, it is possible to model time-variable spectra by taking into account the phase of the exomoon.