JWST ruled out finding tiny moons around an exoplanet—that's great news
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has opened many wonders of the cosmos to scientists since it began science operations a few years ago. But one thing it hasn't done is find an "exomoon." These still-theoretical moons orbit exoplanets in other star systems, and JWST was supposed to find a plethora of them.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has found no evidence for exomoons around the planet LP 890-9 c. This result, published in a preprint paper by astronomer David Kipping, suggests that JWST is capable of detecting exomoons, despite previous assumptions that JWST's noise might hinder such detections. The planet, located about 105 light-years away, orbits extremely close to its ultra-cool red dwarf star, making the discovery of any moons around it challenging.
Kipping analyzed JWST's 12 transits of LP 890-9 c and found that combining multiple, clean transits helped eliminate the noise caused by instrumental glitches and stellar variations. As a result, the sensitivity to detect exomoons improved significantly, leading to a 95% confidence that no moons larger than 0.1 Earth radii orbit LP 890-9 c.
While this particular planet may not retain moons due to the intense tidal forces exerted by its star, the findings demonstrate that JWST's noise floor is not insurmountable, and future observations with more time can potentially uncover small exomoons.
Written by urgent.news from Phys.org's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
