Evidence Found for a Supermoon Outside Our Solar System

Astronomers, thanks to their research for many years, think that the possibility of the existence of moons outside our solar system is high. But these planets are very difficult to detect due to their structure.

Astronomer David Kipping, who conducts his research at the Cool Worlds Laboratory in Columbia, and his team announced that they have reached data that can prove the existence of a moon outside our solar system.

May provide understanding of the formation of planets

The discovery, published in the scientific journal Nature Astronomy, was led by David Kipping at Columbia University’s Cool Worlds Laboratory. Kipping and his team found the signal of a supermoon by looking at an archive of data from NASA’s Kepler telescope. An exoplanet candidate had been discovered before by the same team. According to Kipping, both supermoon candidates discovered were made up of gas that had been piled under the force of gravity due to their enormous size. If this hypothesis is correct, it is thought that both moons may have started life as planets.

Astronomers reported that there is a supermoon 5500 light-years away orbiting a Jupiter-sized planet called Kepler 1708b. “Astronomers have found more than 10,000 exoplanet candidates so far, but discovering a planet outside the solar system is quite challenging,” said David Kipping, leader of the research team.

The most important reason why the planet Kepler 1708b excites astronomers is that it has a high potential to give people ideas about how and where life might have arisen in the universe. Reminding that the existence of exoplanets is met with skepticism, Kipping said, “Although these planets are alien compared to our system, they have revolutionized our understanding of how planetary systems form.”