So the detection of planet TOI 4633 c was a welcome departure. That isn’t only because its 272-day orbit places it in fairly exclusive company: 175 transiting planets found so far with years longer than 100 days, and only 40 over 250 days. The planet, detected using TESS (the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), also orbits in the habitable zone, the distance from a star that could allow liquid water to form on a planetary surface. For planet c, of course, that’s almost certainly not the case; it most likely has a large, dense atmosphere, perhaps similar to Neptune’s, that would rule out surface water. A moon might be one way around this. The longer a planet’s orbital period, the more likely it is to host a satellite, so it isn’t difficult to imagine a potentially habitable moon, à la the fictional Pandora. The brightness of this system could make it a likely target in the continuing search for such “exomoons.”
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