rogue planets are mysterious cosmic
objects with masses comparable to that
of our solar system's planets but which
do not orbit a star and instead roam the
galaxy freely on their own
not many were known until now
but a team of astronomers has discovered
dozens of new rogue planets
roughly doubling the known number of
these mysterious free-roaming worlds
a team of astronomers has identified at
least 17 new rogue planets in the milky
way in a patch of space around 420 light
years from earth using data from several
european southern observatory telescopes
and other facilities this is the largest
collection of rogue planets ever
discovered roaming the milky way a
significant step toward understanding
the origins and characteristics of these
mysterious galactic
the first author of the study nuria
meret reug
said they didn't know how many to expect
and are thrilled to have found so many
most exoplanets are discovered using
observations of their home stars
astronomers observe small stellar
motions generated by the gravitational
pull of an orbiting planet or tiny
brightness dips caused when a world
transits its parent star's face
but such strategies cannot work for
rogue planets making them far more
difficult to locate
astronomers have traditionally relied on
gravitational micro lensing a technique
that involves watching foreground
objects move in front of background
stars
during such passages the foreground body
can function as a gravitational lens
bending the light from the distant star
in ways that can disclose the mass of
the closer object and other features
however moret royg and her team did not
do so
they took advantage of the fact that
these planets are still hot enough to
glow a few million years after formation
making them directly detectable by
sensitive cameras on large telescopes
they discovered at least 17 new rogue
planets with masses equal to jupiter's
in a star-forming zone near our sun in
the upper scorpius in our fucus
constellations
the team analyzed data from several
ground-based and space-based telescopes
spanning around 20 years to find so many
rogue planets
in a vast area in the sky they measured
the small movements the colors
and luminosities of tens of millions of
sources
this data allowed them to confidently
identify the faintest objects in this
region the rogue planets
the researchers analyzed data from the
very large telescope vlt
the visible and infrared survey
telescope for astronomy vista the vlt
survey telescope vst
and the mpg eso 2.2 meter telescope in
chile among other facilities
most of their data come from eso
observatories which were critical for
this study their success was due to
their wide field of view and eccentric
sensitivity
they used tens of thousands of wide
field images from eso facilities
corresponding to hundreds of hours of
observations and literally tens of
terabytes of data
the researchers also use data from the
european space agency's gaia satellite
which is a tremendous step forward in
studying and comprehending our universe
by combining ground and space-based
telescopes
according to the findings there could be
a lot more of these mysterious stylist
planets out there that we have yet to
uncover several billions of these
free-floating giant planets could be
roaming freely in the milky way without
a host star
the latest results bolster the idea that
rogue planets are abundant in the milky
way galaxy
maybe outnumbering normal worlds
orbiting parent stars
by analyzing the newly discovered rogue
planets astronomers may learn more about
how these mysterious objects form
some scientists believe rogue planets
may form due to the collapse of a gas
cloud that is too small to lead to the
birth of a star or they may have been
kicked out of their parent system
however it is unclear which mechanism is
more credible further technological
advancements will be key to uncovering
the mystery of these roaming planets
the team hopes to continue studying them
in more depth with eso's upcoming
extremely large telescope elt which is
currently under construction in chile's
atacama desert and set to begin
observations later this decade
because these objects are so faint there
isn't much that can be done to study
them with the current technology the elt
will be crucial in acquiring more
information about most of the rogue
planets that the astronomers discovered
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