FIRST EXOMOON MAY HAVE BEEN FOUND

First 'exomoon' may have been found 
     BY VERUSKA - ADM 3

Astronomers have announced the possible discovery of the first known moon outside our Solar System.

This "exomoon" is not like any in our cosmic neighbourhood: it's the size of Neptune and orbits a planet the size of Jupiter - but with 10 times the mass.

The object was observed using the Hubble telescope.

 Astronomers David Kipping and Alex Teachey 

But they say that further observations are needed to understand the distant planetary system.

"We've tried our best to rule out other possibilities such as spacecraft anomalies, other planets in the system or stellar activity, but we're unable to find any other single hypothesis which can explain all of the data we have," said Dr Kipping, from Columbia University in New York.

To date, astronomers have discovered more than 3,500 exoplanets - worlds orbiting stars other than the Sun.

This is exactly what the researchers saw: "The location, shape and depth of this event appear consistent with a Neptune-sized moon transiting in front of the star," said Dr Kipping.

About 3.5 hours after the planet's transit ended, the Hubble telescope recorded a second smaller dimming of the star's brightness, which indicated a moon "trailing the planet like a dog following its owner on a leash," according to Dr Kipping.

The researchers also had to remove artefacts from the Hubble data and used computer models to work out how different scenarios fit with the observed data.