In September, NASA officially confirmed the existence of a whopping 6,000 exoplanets—a feat so impressive that it’s bizarre to think that, by contrast, the number of confirmed exomoons tallies up to, well, zero. But that imbalance may shift soon if a new proposal by astronomers ends up being as effective as they claim.

An upcoming Astronomy & Astrophysics paper describes how astronomers devised and utilized a novel, alternative approach for identifying exomoons, which successfully turned up a promising exomoon candidate orbiting HD 206893 B , a Jupiter-like exoplanet located about 133 light-years from Earth. Specifically, the team repurposed high-precision astrometry —a mathematical approach to mapping out stellar distances—to carefully evaluate any and all signals near the exoplane

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