The first suspected exomoon may remain hidden for another decade
Astronomers still can’t pin down the distant object’s identity
SEATTLE — A good exomoon is hard to find. Proving that the first purported moon around an exoplanet actually exists could take up to a decade, its discoverers say.
“We’re running into some difficult problems in terms of confirming the presence of this thing,” said astronomer Alex Teachey of Columbia University at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society on January 10.
Using data from the now-defunct Kepler space telescope, Teachey and his Columbia colleague David Kipping revealed in 2017 that they had found the first hints of a moon orbiting a planet a little bigger than Jupiter around a star about 8,000 light-years away (SN: 8/19/17, p. 15). Then in 2018, the pair reported that data from the Hubble Space Telescope bolstered the case for the moon’s existence, but didn’t confirm it (SN: 10/27/18, p. 14).