SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The first suspected exomoon may remain hidden for another decade
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.
[...] That uncertainty is partly because the purported moon seems to be about the size of Neptune, much larger than moon formation theories predict. And the researchers can't rule out that the evidence of the moon isn't actually evidence of a second planet. "We're trying to be very careful about not calling this a discovery, that we've got this beyond a shadow of a doubt," Teachey said.
[...] Ground-based telescopes are trying to confirm if the object is a moon or a second planet based on the object's gravitational tugs on the known planet. That's a much slower process than looking for dips in light from exoplanets and exomoons passing in front of their stars, which is what the Hubble and Kepler data reveal, and could take five to 10 years, Teachey says.
Headline News: Object Not Found.
Previously: First Exo-Moon Discovered?
First Known Exomoon May Have Been Detected: Kepler 1625b i
New Evidence Supports Existence of Neptune-Sized Exomoon Orbiting Kepler-1625b
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday January 21 2019, @04:55AM (1 child)
I don't see a large binary planet being split evenly like that. Works for some asteroid pairs, but multiple Earth masses?
If two binary planet components were separated by a relatively long distance (like up to 1 AU), that could lower their brightness since they wouldn't appear as one object. It could also lower their temperature and the amount of infrared light given off, making them even harder to detect.
There has been talk of a Mars-sized Planet Ten at the far edge of the Kuiper belt, or other such objects. Those may be easier to find than a hard mode Planet(s) Nine.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday January 21 2019, @03:19PM
Well, I think a double planet is very unlikely, but it's still a fun thought.
One thing about the simulations that show the existence of a Planet 9, is that by the chance of being the outermost of the giant planets, Neptune is awfully important, and the rest don't seem to much matter. But if there is a Mars sized Planet Ten in a 100 AU orbit, could that be more important to the orbital dynamics about Planet 9?