On October 3rd, researches from Columbia University published results from the planet-hunting satellite Kepler that alluded to the possibility of a moon orbiting a planet around a distant star, which, if confirmed, would be the first discovery of a so-called “exomoon” in history. The Kepler spacecraft observes light from distant stars over long periods of time, all while watching for dips in light that would be indicative of a planet passing in front of the star. As of this writing, Kepler has made over two thousand planet discoveries, all while surveying about 0.25% of the sky. These researchers, in analyzing the data from star Kepler-1625, discovered a dip in brightness
during the transit of the planet Kepler-1625b across the face of the star. This dip in brightness could be associated with a moon, although it would be incredibly massive, about the size of the gas giant Neptune. By analyzing this dip, they confirmed that, if real, puts the moon at a close enough distance to the planet to be gravitationally bound to the planet. Unfortunately, this dip in light is within experimental error, so it’s very possible that this is a random anomaly. The data set to the right shows this dip, as observed by Kepler and processed by the researchers. More research is needed to pin this down, but, if confirmed, it would be the only moon discovered outside of our solar system, as well as the largest moon ever discovered.
Sources:
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/10/eaav1784/tab-figures-data
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Is the possible moon orbiting kepler-1625b or was the anomaly just during the observation of that planets orbit? Do they have enough information to even estimate what planet it would be orbiting?
The anomaly was found during an investigation of the orbit of Kepler-1625b. Considering that the dip happened during the dip caused by the planet, it’s likely that, assuming the dip isn’t experimental error, the object is gravitationally bound to the planet, making it a moon.
how big is the estimated size of Kepler-1625b? Wouldn’t it have to be like massive to sustain a constant orbit with a neptune size (posible) moon?
The problem with science is always that experimental error. I hope this dip isn’t due to experimental error though.