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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

The first satellite [wikipedia.org] orbiting an exoplanet may have been discovered [bbc.com]:

A team of astronomers has potentially discovered the first known moon beyond the Solar System. If confirmed, the "exomoon" is likely to be about the size and mass of Neptune, and circles a planet the size of Jupiter but with 10 times the mass.

The signal was detected by Nasa's Kepler Space Telescope; astronomers now plan to carry out follow-up observations with Hubble in October. A paper about the candidate moon is published on the Arxiv pre-print site [arxiv.org].

[...] The Kepler telescope hunts for planets by looking for tiny dips in the brightness of a star when a planet crosses in front - known as a transit. To search for exomoons, researchers are looking for a dimming of starlight before and after the planet causes its dip in light. The promising signal was observed during three transits - fewer than the astronomers would like to have in order to confidently announce a discovery.

The host star, Kepler-1625 [wikipedia.org], is about 4,000 light years away. The potential exomoon, Kepler 1625b i, has been nicknamed "Nept-moon".

Also at ScienceNews [sciencenews.org].

The Hunt for Exomoons with Kepler [columbia.edu] (please update your site).

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