Free-floating planet drifting through space tracked by scientists

Beijing (dpa) – A free-floating planet drifting through space is being closely followed by scientists who are managing to find out more about its mass and direction. Scientists have known about this and other rogue bodies for some time but only lately have had the means to determine their mass or distance accurately. This planet has been spotted from two locations simultaneously by a team led by Subo Dong from Beijing University. They used telescopes on Earth plus an observatory in space to win new findings about the object. The team of astronomers says the planet probably formed in a so-called protoplanetary disc – just like a normal planet – and not in isolation in space. "Dynamic processes later ejected it from its region of origin, turning it into a free-floating object," says the team writing in the journal Science. Satellite and telescopes on Earth enable the solution Free-floating planets were first discovered in 2000, says Gavin Coleman of Queen Mary University of London. But observing them is extremely difficult as they are far away from light sources and do not orbit a star. They are so far away that they can only be detected when they happen to pass in front of a background star and deflect its light with their mass. That works like a magnifying glass and astronomers call the effect "gravitational microlensing." But this phenomenon does not normally allow for an accurate determination of distance and mass. Dong's team overcame this problem by combining the Gaia satellite, located about 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, with several ground-based telescopes. Using the small time difference between the light from the background star reaching Earth and the space telescope, plus other data, the team was able to calculate the planet's properties. Mass of Saturn and 10,000 light years away The planet has approximately the mass of Saturn and is around 10,000 light years away, say the scientists. Smaller rogue planets probably form like other planets in a planetary system and are later ejected, they say. But larger free objects could form directly in molecular clouds, similar to small stars. So far, thousands of planets orbiting stars have been discovered outside our solar system – but there are only a few known rogue planets, Coleman says. This could change with NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (NGRST), an infrared space telescope scheduled to launch in 2027. Researchers are not yet sure whether the newly discovered planet is actually floating wholly through space or whether it is in a very wide orbit around a star. The planet does not yet have a name, but is identified by the somewhat cumbersome number KMT-2024-BLG-0792/OGLE-2024-BLG-0516. The following information is not intended for publication dpa hu waw xxde arw coh

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