Sodium Lanterns: Igniting Exomoon Orbits with Doppler Redshifts and Radio Bursts

Speaker: 
Apurva Oza
Institution: 
Caltech
Date: 
Tuesday, November 17, 2026
Time: 
4:00 pm
Location: 
RH 160

Abstract: Io's volcanism was first seen indirectly: as a sodium cloud and a repeating plasma radio burst signature. The same signatures are studied at exoplanets. At spectral resolving powers near 100,000, alkali doublets separate gas bound to a planet from satellite material in orbit due to unprecedented Doppler shift resolution techniques. At the hot Saturn WASP-49 A b, several transits from HARPS to the Keck Planet Finder show sodium that varies nightly as expected for a satellite orbit, detected in  redshift at +9.7 ± 1.6 km/s. I present  a population study of sodium at hot Saturns and a transit of HD 189733 b from Keck Planet Finder and JWST transits of WASP-39b  indicative of volcanic, close-in exomoons . As multiwavelength searches for exo-Ios are especially pivotal for orbit reconstruction, I also provide evidence of an extrasolar plasma torus in radio emission from an ultra-cool dwarf. Lastly, JWST lava planets and habitable exomoon predictions are discussed for the ELT and the Habitable Worlds Observatory.

Host: 
Paul Robertson