Astronomers may have found the first exomoon

pelagicAustral wrote: post #3

I know this is besides the article and all, but why would the Chilean flag be the only one to have 8px left margin? This is killing me...

Now I can't unsee it :/

Re: Astronomers may have found the first exomoon

#5

Post by benabbott » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 2:14 PM UTC

this would actually be a planet, based on my understanding of celestial bodies? moons are natural satellites orbiting planets. this "moon" is orbiting a brown dwarf.

Re: Astronomers may have found the first exomoon

#6

Post by haihaoxu » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 2:14 PM UTC

[dead]

Re: Astronomers may have found the first exomoon

#7

Post by molf » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 2:16 PM UTC

pelagicAustral wrote: post #3

I know this is besides the article and all, but why would the Chilean flag be the only one to have 8px left margin? This is killing me...

I believe such organisations tend to do such things very intentionally :-)

About ESO [1]

> We are an intergovernmental organisation established in 1962 supported by 16 Member States (Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), our host country Chile and strategic partners.

So Chile has a distinct status, hence the margin...?

[1]: https://www.eso.org/public/about-eso/

Re: Astronomers may have found the first exomoon

#8

Post by eamag » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 2:18 PM UTC

benabbott wrote: post #5

this would actually be a planet, based on my understanding of celestial bodies? moons are natural satellites orbiting planets. this "moon" is orbiting a brown dwarf.

First paragraph:

> The star is being orbited by a brown dwarf, an object too massive to be a planet but too small to be a star.

Re: Astronomers may have found the first exomoon

#9

Post by Foskya » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 2:19 PM UTC

I guess it is more of a derivative of the question: "in which bucket should we put the brown dwarf? Is it a star or a planet?". The answer is neither of course; but since it is more closely related to stars than to planets, I'm more inclined to call this satellite an exoplanet (instead of exomoon).

That being said it is still a nice finding, way more difficult to discover than "normal" exopanets.

Re: Astronomers may have found the first exomoon

#10

Post by HelloUsername » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 2:20 PM UTC

An important phrase from the article to consider before commenting: "This system is somewhat hard to define using Solar-System-based words like ‘planet’ and ‘moon’"