Astronomers have found a very large, gas-filled object orbiting a "failed star" about 73 light-years away. This discovery challenges our usual idea of a moon, which is typically a small, rocky body. The object is as heavy as Jupiter, or possibly even more.
This new celestial body is in a system called CD-35 2722. It orbits a brown dwarf, which is an object too big to be a planet but not big enough to be a star. The object orbits the brown dwarf every 170 days, which is a very fast orbit. Its size and gas nature are very different from the moons we know in our solar system.
Scientists are having trouble naming it. Kevin Hoy, who led the research, said that normal terms like "planet" or "moon" do not fit. The team has decided to call it an "exosatellite" for now. The rules for naming moons outside our solar system are not yet clear.
This discovery was made using the Very Large Telescope in Chile. By measuring the brown dwarf's slight movements, scientists detected the unseen companion. This method is similar to how the first planet outside our solar system was found. The findings were published in the journal Nature. This is the first strong evidence of an exosatellite, which could help scientists understand how different celestial bodies form and interact.