Not only planets outside the Solar System, astronomers are also hunting for the Moon. And recently, they reported that they may have discovered a moon that is larger than Earth.
This moon orbits a planet that is thought to be similar to Jupiter. In a review in the journal Nature Astronomy, the planet and moon orbit a sun-like star 5,000 light-years from Earth.
"This moon is quite strange compared to the moon in our Solar System. We are not sure if it is rocky, whether it contains gas. Its size is between Neptune, which has gas and Earth, which is rocky," said David Kipping, an astronomer at Columbia University.
As quoted by us from NPR, this is not the first time that moons have been detected outside the Solar System, sometimes referred to as exomoons.
A few years ago, Kipping and his colleagues have also discovered exomoons. However, the Moon's discovery has not been confirmed by further research.
In our Solar System, the number of Moons exceeds the number of planets. So it's natural for scientists to wonder if the same thing is happening in other Solar Systems. Moreover, there is also the possibility that a Moon can be inhabited by living things.
However, finding exomoons is not as easy as tracking exoplanets, of which thousands of them have been discovered so far. Apparently, existing telescopes are not powerful enough to easily detect moons outside the Solar System.
The James Webb Telescope, the most advanced and most expensive telescope recently launched by NASA, may be able to track such a Moon better than ever before.