Asst Prof at East Texas A&M University. Aficionado of planets orbiting binary stars. Double sunsets are twice as nice! All opinions are my own.
Commerce, TX
Joined November 2011
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Proud to celebrate my undergraduate student Alan Briseño, first author of a new @AAS_Publishing ApJ paper on how tides shape packed moon systems around Earth-mass planets. 🌙🪐
📰 etamu.edu/news/astrophysics-…
📄 iopscience.iop.org/article/1…
@etamuniversity #ETAMU #GoLions
New interview out with @AAS_Publishing. I talk about my latest research at @etamuniversity on how moons evolve when their planets orbit small, cool stars; and what that could mean for planetary systems (and maybe life!). Listen here: youtu.be/eJvsEVhTSzw
#ETAMU #Astronomy
The Galaxy's Most Common Stars May Be Missing a Key Ingredient for Life: Long-Lived Moons.
My new paper w/ Shaan Patel shows M-dwarfs are likely "moon-killers," stripping Earth-like planets of moons in just a few million years.
Full story: tinyurl.com/2s4ctmwp
Why so fast?
For M-dwarfs, the Habitable Zone (HZ) is packed tight against the star (0.08–0.52 au). This proximity creates intense stellar tides that strip moons away rapidly—unlike the Earth-Sun system where we have breathing room.
The implications are cosmic.
🌌 Moons stabilize planetary spin & climate, potentially aiding life. If the galaxy's most common stars (M-dwarfs) are "moon-killers," it could complicate our view of the Drake Equation.
#astronomy #exomoon #habitablezone
Billy Quarles retweeted
Alpha Centauri A might host a habitable-zone giant planet. If confirmed, any moons orbiting this planet could be among the most promising nearby locations to search for life. Can we detect those moons by carefully monitoring the position of the planet?
arxiv.org/abs/2509.13513
In collaboration with @exoAS23b, we show strong evidence for a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting Alpha Cen A using @NASAWebb. A planet candidate for now, but more data is always key. etamu.edu/news/east-texas-am…
Billy Quarles retweeted
We give this system 3 stars! ⭐⭐⭐
Webb revealed strong evidence of a giant gas planet orbiting one of the three stars (as shown in this artist illustration) in the Alpha Centauri system, located four light years away. go.nasa.gov/3Jmbopa
ALT Graphic titled “NASA's Webb Finds New Evidence for Planet Around Closest Solar Twin.” The background, labeled “artist concept,” shows a large spherical object that looks like a gas giant planet. The object appears to have bands of tan, orange, and dark red horizontal lines forming patterns similar to those in the atmosphere of Jupiter. The background is filled with thousands of distant stars that form a Milky Way-like band running from top left to right. The host star, Alpha Centauri A is a glowing circle near the top left. Further off in the distance above and to the right of the planet is a smaller glowing circle, nearby Alpha Centauri B.
New @MNRAS_Lett on K2-18b, a Hycean world candidate around an M3 dwarf! Our models show any exomoon would be driven off by tidal migration in just 10s of Myr, so any ocean-dwelling life here would have to thrive without lunar tides.
academic.oup.com/mnrasl/arti…
#Astrobiology #Exomoons
Check out this audio overview to get the gist of the paper in ~5 minutes: notebooklm.google.com/notebo…
Our latest work, led by Shaan Patel, explores the orbital stability of moons and submoons using Kepler-1625, 1708 & HD 23079! We find key stable regions & secular resonances shaping the dynamics. Check it out! #Astrophysics #Exomoons arxiv.org/abs/2501.12258
ALT AI generated vista of a submoon with its host moon. An illustration of the Milky Way is in the background.
Billy Quarles retweeted
From “Star Trek” Fan to Award-Winning Researcher: VSU’s Jordan Hewins Says Science Has the Power to Change Humanity. bit.ly/4cMb918 #VState #BlazerNation 🔥
Billy Quarles retweeted
In German..
Wie viele Monde könnte die Erde theoretisch haben?
@saturnaxis
derstandard.de/story/2000138…
How many moons can the Earth have? For moons like our own, my collaborators (@sumansatyal and @multiversario) and I find 3 such moons could stably orbit the Earth using #REBOUND. Check out the details in our newest publication (arxiv.org/abs/2208.03604).
Billy Quarles retweeted
New paper day! And it's on one of our favourite topics, #exomoons! Here's a 🧵summarising our 115 page behemoth of a paper, "An Exomoon Survey of 70 Cool Giant Exoplanets and the New Candidate Kepler-1708 b-i", published today 👇 nature.com/articles/s41550-0…
A second exomoon candidate has been identified using transit data from the Kepler Space Telescope. The proposed exomoon orbits its host planet in a similar way as Europa orbits Jupiter. Cool Worlds has a video explaining how the discovery was made. youtu.be/Blej3YvveCI
Earthlike life in Alpha Centauri AB could be very different. Especially, for planets inclined relative to the binary and hosted by star B. Such worlds could have wicked ice age cycles, with some periods like Earth and and others like the ice world Hoth. arxiv.org/abs/2108.12650
HD 23079b is a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting its star at the outer edge of the habitable zone. Oshina Jagtap (then undergrad (now grad) at UT-Arlington) and I updated some constraints for moons in this system. Check out her new publication in PASA (arxiv.org/abs/2110.10013)
