Скачать или смотреть How To Detect A Volcanic Moon Away From Our Solar System |

A volcanic moon might be orbiting a planet 600 light-years away from Earth. These distant exomoons are often too small to see directly, but they can leave traces. In this case, scientists detected a massive cloud of sodium gas near the planet WASP-49b, and the evidence suggests it didn’t come from the planet itself or its star, but possibly from a volcanic moon.

Using an Earth-based telescope, researchers saw the gas cloud moving faster than the planet, heading away from Earth—hinting at a different source, much like Jupiter's volcanic moon Io. Jupiter's gravity pulls on Io, causing it to release a huge gas cloud into space, and WASP-49b may be doing something similar, but even more extreme. While more observations are needed to confirm the exomoon, this discovery is an exciting first step toward understanding these hidden worlds.