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Astronomers Report Possible First Exomoon Orbiting HD 206893 b

VLTI/GRAVITY astrometry spotted a moon-like wobble that the team calls preliminary.

Overview

  • The candidate, inferred from tiny positional shifts of the planet, is estimated at about 0.4 Jupiter masses with a roughly 278-day orbit at approximately 0.22 AU.
  • The authors caution the signal could arise from instrument systematics or a double-planet scenario, so independent confirmation is needed.
  • The results are described in a preprint on arXiv and have been submitted to the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
  • Observations were made with ESO’s GRAVITY instrument on the Very Large Telescope Interferometer at Cerro Paranal in Chile.
  • Media reports list conflicting values for the system’s distance and the planet’s mass, underscoring the provisional nature of a claim in a field with no confirmed exomoons to date.