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Astronomers<\/a> have found a new world so strange that they don\u2019t even know what to call it.<\/p>\n The object is in the \u201csuper weird\u201d star system CD-35 2722 and might be the first moon<\/a> seen outside of our own solar system<\/a>. But astronomers say that it is so new that it is unlike anything we have seen before \u2013 among other things, the object does not orbit around a planet \u2013\u00a0and so it is not clear exactly what to call it.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a clear delineation between the planets and the Sun in the Solar System, so defining things like moons<\/a> is simple,\u201d said Alice Zurlo, who worked on the new study. \u201cIn the CD-35 2722 system, where we are blurring the lines between stars<\/a>, planets, and moons, the whole thing becomes more complicated to describe.\u201d<\/p>\n As well as not orbiting a planet, like moons in our own solar system, it circles around a failed star known as a brown dwarf that itself orbits the star in the CD-35 2722. It was found using the European Southern Observatory\u2019s Very Large Telescope.<\/p>\n For now, the team has decided to call the object an \u201cexosatellite\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe exosatellite is clearly massive enough to be a planet, but it does not orbit a star, though it orbits an object that orbits a star,” said Kevin Hoy, author on the new study. “Being the third wheel in this system makes us want to call it a moon, even if it is nothing like the small, rocky moons we have in our system.\u201d<\/p>\n Astronomers have been trying to find moons outside of our solar system for years, but have not yet been able to confirm the existence of one. Despite finding more than 6,000 exoplanets \u2013\u00a0or worlds in other solar systems \u2013\u00a0none of them has yet been fully confirmed to actually exist.<\/p>\n To find the new object, researchers looked for small wobbles in the brown dwarf, which are caused by the object that orbits it. \u201cAs exotic as it is, this system is truly unique and represents a breakthrough: the first plausible detection of an exosatellite,\u201d said Zurlo.<\/p>\n Finding moons in other planetary systems will help us understand how common they are, the ways they form, and how similar they are to each other. Scientists hope that they will be able to find more in the future with upcoming, even more powerful telescopes.<\/p>\n The discovery is reported in a new paper, \u2018Planetary-Mass Exosatellite Detected Around a Star\u2019s Substellar Companion\u2019, published in the journal Nature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":782722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[79],"class_list":["post-782721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=782721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/782722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=782721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=782721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=782721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}