A team led by Kevin Hoy from the Universidad Diego Portales and the European Southern Observatory has identified an object located 71 light-years from us. This detection of the first confirmed 'exosatellite' complicates our neat definitions of stars, planets, and moons.
An 'exosatellite' is essentially a moon orbiting a planet outside our own solar system. We have always grouped space objects into simple, tidy buckets: stars, planets, and moons. The discovery of this object shows that these categories are not as rigid as our school textbooks suggest. ✨
Previously, the search for life in space focused almost entirely on finding isolated planets. Detecting this satellite is a significant step forward from just scanning for those larger parent planets, as these smaller objects are much harder to spot due to their size.
The universe rarely fits into the boxes we build for it.
What other hidden objects are we missing right under our noses?
#space #astronomy #science
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