The sky is vast, and it’s very rare that we just happen to be looking in the right direction by accident to catch something amazing. Luckily, we often get hints of “here lies the remarkable.” 

Recently, astronomers observed the variable star GQ Lupi’s giant planet, or possibly brown dwarf companion, it’s hard to tell because this is a young system still forming. And because it’s a young system still forming that has a giant planet, or brown dwarf, they were able to ask, “How do the moon systems of Jupiter-like world’s form?” and get an answer. 

Direct imaging using the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile was able to make out a warm disk around the Jupiter-like object, and it seems to indicate that moons form in a disk around the planet just as planets form in a disk around the star. While the VLT is the best telescope we have today, team lead Tomas Stolker pointed out that: Webb can take spectra at mid-infrared wavelengths. That is very challenging from Earth. In doing so, we could learn much more about the physical and chemical processes in the disk of GQ Lupi B that may enable the formation of moons. 

Here is to hoping that JWST finally gets off this planet and lets us start looking at other worlds. This work is published in The Astronomical Journal.

More Information

NOVA press release

“Characterizing the protolunar disk of the accreting companion GQ Lupi B,” Tomas Stolker et al., to be published in The Astronomical Journal (preprint on arxiv.org)