That's no moon...
...oh, wait, it might be.
Thanks to the work of the Kepler space telescope and Earth-bound observations, we have now caught sight of nearly 2,000 exoplanets: planetary bodies orbiting distant stars. But now astronomers think they've caught the first sighting of an exomoon orbiting one of these distant planets. Planetary moons are relatively common in …
"This could either be a distant, slow-moving small star circled by a planet about 18 times as big as Earth, or a fast-moving planet relatively closer to Earth that's three or four times larger than Jupiter, with a moon significantly smaller than our planet."
So how do the boffins confirm which scenario is the real one? Redshift?
The discovery of exoplanets really is right up there will the very coolest of stuff. For me at least, it's a new frontier of astronomy. In the distant future, I think it has the potential to be an inspiring 'moment' for humanity. In time, I'm sure there will be some kind of hypertelescope that will produce an image of a relatively close exo-earth. When the general population can see a pic of clouds, and I dunno, maybe sea and land, then I reckon that's a moment that seriously will change attitudes for everyone. Like the moon landings, or the discovery of beer.
.. how unusual. Who would have thought that would happen? Doh!
Leaving out the primary body, we have something 18 times bigger than Earth or something "significantly smaller than our planet". Got to love that degree of accuracy. How did they rule out all the intermediate sizes.
Didn't they get enough spectroscopic data to distinguish between a star or planet as the primary body?
Can't believe that this merits being published or even an El reg article.