An worldwide staff of astronomers has found the most important group of ‘rogue planets’. Rogue planets don’t orbit a star and exoplanet hunters have discovered few such planets in our galaxy.
The staff used 20 years of knowledge from a number of European Southern Observatory (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT), the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), the VLT Survey Telescope (VST), and the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope positioned in Chile, together with different services to make the invention.
“We did not know how many to expect and are excited to have found so many,” says Núria Miret-Roig in a launch. She is an astronomer on the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Bordeaux, France, and the University of Vienna, Austria, and the primary writer of the research printed final week in Nature Astronomy.
Our new paper was simply printed in @NatureAstronomy (@nmiretroig, Bouy et al)!
Punchline: we discovered ~100 free-floating planets in a single star-forming area! This roughly doubles the complete pattern of identified rogue planets.
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— Sean Raymond (@sraymond_astro) December 22, 2021
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The researchers discovered the rogue planets in a star-forming area positioned inside the Scorpius and Ophiuchus constellations.
This picture reveals the areas of 115 potential rogue planets, highlighted with crimson circles (ESO/N. Risinger)
“We measured the tiny motions, the colours, and luminosities of tens of millions of sources in a large area of the sky,” explains Miret-Roig. “These measurements allowed us to securely identify the faintest objects in this region, the rogue planets.”
The staff notes that the precise variety of rogue planets discovered is tough to pin down and the depend is between 70 and 170. They add that by learning rogue planets, we might discover clues to how these mysterious objects have been fashioned.
The research provides there might be many such starless planets but to be found. “There could be several billions of these free-floating giant planets roaming freely in the Milky Way without a host star,” explains Hervé Bouy, an astronomer on the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Bordeaux, France, and venture chief of the brand new analysis.
