First teasing glimpse of an alien moon

• Autores: Jacob Aron
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 2950, 2014, pág. 9
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • A newly detected celestial body may be the first moon spotted outside the solar system. Massive, far from its parent planet and with no host star, the candidate "exomoon" is unlike any other known moon. With so many exoplanets already found, the hunt is on for exomoons. Until now, they had proved elusive. David Bennett of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and his colleagues report that they spotted this "microlensing" effect in 2011, using telescopes around the world. It fits with a large object passing in front of the star, followed by a smaller one. Detecting the bodies again to determine the truth may be impossible because spotting objects via microlensing requires them to line up in a particular way. If the planet-moon scenario is correct then the duo is weird.