Astronomers always knew spotting moons around planets outside the solar system would be no mean feat — but a debate currently raging in planetary science circles shows just how tough detecting these so-called exomoons is going to be.
The story begins in 2018, when astronomers including David Kipping, an assistant professor of astronomy at Columbia University, believed they'd made their first detection of an exomoon. The subject was found around exoplanet Kepler-1625b, a Jupiter-like world located around 8,000 light years from Earth. It was initially spotted with the Kepler Space Telescope.
