The First 'Exomoon' Ever Discovered Could Introduce a New Type of Celestial Body
An illustration of the system around the star CD-35 2722, with the newly found moon-like object at the center.Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser
What makes a moon a moon? To be a satellite, something only needs to orbit something else, which makes for an easy definition. But what makes a particular type of satellite a moon, specifically?
For the first time, a scientific paper has attempted to offer a practical answer to this question. Published Wednesday in the journal Nature, the paper presents data on what could be called the first-ever observation of an exomoon—or, it could be something else entirely.
That's because the potential exomoon in question, found in a system called CD-35 2722, is orbiting a brown dwarf which is itself orbiting the system's core star.
A brown dwarf forms like a star, but it never gathers enough mass to sustain hydrogen fusion in its core, and so continues...
Copyright of this story solely belongs to extremetech.com. To see the full text click HERE
