How Astrophysicists First Saw an Exoplanet’s Moon

In recent years, we’ve all become accustomed to astrophysicists regularly discovering new exoplanetary systems, with the number of known exoplanets increasing by hundreds every year. However, thanks to the powerful ALMA telescope in Chile, astronomers recently discovered a circumplanetary disk of gas and dust around the exoplanet PDS 70c, within which exomoons could potentially form. <img alt="" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:700/1*rSLguW27FX-0N2M9UEtVAA.png" style="height:288px; width:700px" /> Exoplanets PDS 70b and PDS 70c PDS 70 is a young variable star of the T Tauri class, located 400 light years away from us. The hypothesis of the existence of a protoplanetary disk around it was first proposed in 1992, but it was only confirmed in 2006. The radius of this disk is about 140 astronomical units or approximately 21 billion kilometers. In 2012, a significant gap was discovered in this disk, suggesting an exoplanet’s presence within it. <a href="https://medium.com/@deep.space/how-astrophysicists-first-saw-an-exoplanets-moon-46eadcf619e4">Visit Now</a>