Discovered Mustafar? Wasp 49B The Volcanic Exomoon (Darth Vader Home)
111🌎 Get Our Merch designed with ❤ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNYaxPiba3oxmeL_3jKxnYA/store
💫Get 10% off Under Lucky Stars and enjoy our star maps completely custom-made 💫 https://www.underluckystars.com/INSANECURIOSITY
--
From what it is, to what it resembles in pop culture, join us as we reveal to you the volcanic exomoon found near the planet known as Wasp 49-B!
7. Wasp 49-B
Before we get to this very special and unique kind of moon, we need to discuss the planet that it is on. Because we've known about the planet much more than we did about the moon itself. The planet is known as Wasp 49-B, with "Wasp 49" being a reference to a yellow dwarf star that the planet orbits.
NASA defines the planet as such:
"WASP-49 b is a gas giant exoplanet that orbits a G-type star. Its mass is 0.37 Jupiters, it takes 2.8 days to complete one orbit of its star, and is 0.0379 AU from its star. Its discovery was announced in 2012."
Just in that description we got some fascinating details that show just how similar, yet different, Wasp 49-B is from our own planets in our own solar system.
For example, many people like to say that Wasp 49-B is a "Jupiter-Like Planet", which is true to an extent because it is a gas giant with a coloring that is similar to Jupiter's. However, the mass of the planet and the distance from the sun are vastly different than our Jupiter.
In our solar system, Jupiter is the fifth planet from the sun, and so its AU (astronomical unit, or distance from it to the sun) is MUCH higher. What's more, the yearly orbit is well over a year, not 3 days.
Add to that, Jupiter is the biggest planet in our solar system, and it has the mass to match. Wasp 49- does not.
So given all of that, it's not to say that the planet isn't impressive, but there's a reason that people are talking more about the newly discovered moon than the planet itself in many cases.
6. The Hidden Moon
Despite the planet itself being known about for many years, the moon that orbits around Wasp 49-B was only discovered in 2019, and when astronomers were able to observe this "hidden moon", they were quite fascinated to say the least. Because the moon wasn't just a regular moon like we've all seen thousands of times. It was one that was very volcanic in nature:
“It would be a dangerous volcanic world with a molten surface of lava, a lunar version of close-in super-Earths like 55 Cancri e,” said Dr. Apurva Oza, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bern. “The enormous tidal forces in such a system are the key to everything.”
For those unfamiliar with the term, the "tidal forces" is a reference to how certain planets and moons are "tidally locked" to their stars that they orbit around. Meaning that one half of the planet constantly faces the sun, while the other side doesn't. Usually, this creates a dichotomy of effects, with one site being lava or always burning, and the other side being frozen over. But in this case, the tidal forces come from the planet the moon orbits, and it would seem that nearly the whole moon is this volcanic-like entity.
“The energy released by the tides to the planet and its moon keeps the moon’s orbit stable, simultaneously heating it up and making it volcanically active.”
The reason for the detection of this moon was actually due to deposits of sodium. When certain volcanic eruptions happen, certain gasses and particles are sent high up into the atmosphere, including sodium. It was the sodium that they detected near Wasp 49-B, and when they did, they realized that it was very similar to another volcanic moon. One that is very close to where we live, IO, the moon that orbits Jupiter.
“Observations of Jupiter and Io in our Solar System, along with mass loss calculations, show that an exo-Io could be a very plausible source of sodium at WASP-49b. The sodium is right where it should be.”
Io is arguably one of the more famous moons in our solar system, and if you didn't know how volcanically active it was, here is a breakdown of just how active it is. Try and notice the similarities between Io and the moon above Wasp 49-B.
"With over 400 active volcanoes, Io is the most geologically active object in the Solar System. This extreme geologic activity is the result of tidal heating from friction generated within Io's interior as it is pulled between Jupiter and the other Galilean satellites—Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Several volcanoes produce plumes of sulfur and sulfur dioxide that climb as high as 500 km (300 mi) above the surface."
That's a lot of similarities. However, there is one thing you should know, the scientists who are watching this moon very close have noted that when it comes to exomoons like this one, their volcanic activities are cool, they do have a big detrimental impact on the entity itself: