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.
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Astronomers may have found the first exomoon
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Re: Astronomers may have found the first exomoon
#12A small dense planet, which orbits a star, is orbited by a larger gaseous moon. It's interesting the discovery is in Chile which has some of the best night skies, a Class 1 on the Bortle scale specifically in the Atacama Desert. Hoping to make it out there one day.
Re: Astronomers may have found the first exomoon
#13> Instead, it circles a brown dwarf, an object larger than a planet, that orbits the CD-35 2722 star.
Isn't the dividing line between the largest possible gas giants and the smallest brown dwarfs a bit fuzzy?
Re: Astronomers may have found the first exomoon
#14I 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.
I thought we’re supposed to call them dwarf planets now. Dwarf star, dwarf planet.
Re: Astronomers may have found the first exomoon
#15this 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.
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Re: Astronomers may have found the first exomoon
#16I 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 s…
Granted, makes sense...
Re: Astronomers may have found the first exomoon
#17this 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.
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Re: Astronomers may have found the first exomoon
#18> Instead, it circles a brown dwarf, an object larger than a planet, that orbits the CD-35 2722 star. Isn't the dividing line between the largest possible gas giants and the smallest brown dwarfs a bit fuzzy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substellar_object
The definition of a brown dwarf is that there is enough heat and compression for deuterium and/or lithium fusion, but not protium fusion.
The exact model limit is unclear, but the physics modelling is relatively straightforward.
Re: Astronomers may have found the first exomoon
#19I wonder if this thing in turn has something in orbit around it? At the size I wouldn't surprise me if it had satellites of its own in orbit, leaving open the question of what to call them. (I'm no astrophysicist, is this really possible I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me. What would surprise me is if we could detect them)
Re: Astronomers may have found the first exomoon
#20I 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.
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