An ‘exomoon‘ that is almost three times the size of Earth orbiting a Jupiter-sized planet, discovered outside our Solar System.
Scientists think they’ve found from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope observations, a moon outside our solar system, nearly three times as big as Earth.
Astronomers have reported a second, super-sized moon orbiting a Jupiter-sized planet beyond our solar system. If confirmed, the sighting could mean that exomoons are as common in the universe as exoplanets, and that big or small, such moons are a feature of planetary systems.
The discovery was led by Professor David Kipping and his Cool Worlds Lab at Columbia University.
The discovery, published in Nature Astronomy, was led by David Kipping and his Cool Worlds Lab at Columbia University, which reported the first exomoon candidate in 2018.
“Astronomers have found more than 10,000 exoplanet candidates so far, but exomoons are far more challenging,” said Kipping, who has spent the last decade hunting for exomoons. “They are terra incognita.”
Image Credit Helena Valenzuela Widerström
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