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Scientists discover ‘rogue’ planet Floating in space on its own.
Most planets we know of orbit as part of a star system with one or more suns, just like our Earth and other planets in our solar system.
But some worlds, known as free-floating or rogue planets, drift independently through the universe, seemingly unattached to any star system of their own.
These objects are even more mysterious, in part because they are much less bright than the other planets. For example, one of the key ways to detect other worlds is to spot them as they move in front of their stars—but without a star, such rogue planets are harder to spot.
Now, scientists have discovered one of these planets using a microlensing event, which occurs when an object’s gravity amplifies the light from the star behind it.
Because this effect can be observed with ground-based and space-based telescopes, astronomers are able to compare these different locations and use them to calculate the planet’s mass. It’s about 22 percent the size of Jupiter, they say, and the planet is about 3,000 parsecs from the center of our galaxy.
Researchers say the planet’s mass means it may have formed within the planetary system it broke away from. Such low-mass rogue planets are thought to be flung into space when large gravitational changes occur in their systems, such as interactions with nearby planets or unstable stars.
The newly discovered world is one of the few rogue planets discovered to date. But their numbers are expected to increase in the coming years, especially through the launch of NASA’s Nancy Grace Rome Space Telescope.
The work is described in a new paper, “Free-floating planetary microlensing events caused by Saturn-mass objects,” published in the journal science.