Are we nearing finding the first moon outside our solar system?... A promising candidate could yield an amazing find.

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 56%. (I'm a bot)

A cloud of debris around a nearby planet may soon yield the first detection of an exomoon.

While the planet itself won't be crossing between Earth and its sun anytime soon, scientists realized that any moons or rings would interrupt the light coming from the star.

Every 20 years, the planet, known as Beta Pictoris b, reaches its closest distance to the star, making it easier to detect any potential rings or satellites.

These observations can help scientists determine how long it takes a planet to circle the star, and thus how wide its orbit is, but can only spot planets that move between the star and our sun.

Using the Gemini Planet Imager, a team of astronomers lead by Jason Wang, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, refined the orbit of Beta Pic b. While the planet comes tantalizingly close to passing between its star and the Earth, they found it doesn't quite transit.

"Interestingly, the planet is not by itself. Generally planets have a cocoon of material around it if it's very young, like this one," says team member Franck Marchis, a researcher at the SETI Institute in California.

Summary Source | FAQ | Feedback | Top keywords: planet^#1 star^#2 Earth^#3 While^#4 between^#5

Post found in /r/space.

NOTICE: This thread is for discussing the submission topic. Please do not discuss the concept of the autotldr bot here.