Baby Free-Floating Planet Found Alone, Away From A Star

The planetary world keeps getting stranger. Scientists have found free-floating planets — drifting alone, away from stars — before. But the “newborn” PSO J318.5-22 (only 12 million years old) shows properties similar to other young planets around young stars, even though there is no star nearby the planet.

“We have never before seen an object free-floating in space that that looks like this. It has all the characteristics of young planets found around other stars, but it is drifting out there all alone,” stated team leader Michael Liu, who is with the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “I had often wondered if such solitary objects exist, and now we know they do.”

Image from the Pan-STARRS1 telescope of the free-floating planet PSO J318.5-22, in the constellation of Capricornus. Credit: N. Metcalfe & Pan-STARRS 1 Science Consortium

The planet is about 80 light-years from Earth, which is quite close, and is part of a star group named after Beta Pictoris that also came together about 12 million years ago. There is a planet in orbit around Beta Pictoris itself, but PSO J318.5-22 has a lower mass and likely had a different formation scenario, the researchers said.

Astronomers uncovered the planet, which is six times the mass of Jupiter, while looking for brown dwarfs or “failed stars.” PSO J318.5-22’s ultra-red color stood apart from the other objects in the survey, astronomers said.

The free-floating planet was identified in the Pan-STARRS 1 wide-field survey telescope in Maui. Follow-up observations were performed with several other Hawaii-based telescopes, including the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility, the Gemini North Telescope, and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.

The discovery will soon be detailed in Astrophysical Letters, but for now you can read the prepublished verison on Arxiv.

Source: Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii

Elizabeth Howell

Elizabeth Howell is the senior writer at Universe Today. She also works for Space.com, Space Exploration Network, the NASA Lunar Science Institute, NASA Astrobiology Magazine and LiveScience, among others. Career highlights include watching three shuttle launches, and going on a two-week simulated Mars expedition in rural Utah. You can follow her on Twitter @howellspace or contact her at her website.

Recent Posts

New View of Venus Reveals Previously Hidden Impact Craters

Think of the Moon and most people will imagine a barren world pockmarked with craters.…

3 hours ago

Multimode Propulsion Could Revolutionize How We Launch Things to Space

In a few years, as part of the Artemis Program, NASA will send the "first…

14 hours ago

China Trains Next Batch of Taikonauts

China has a fabulously rich history when it comes to space travel and was among…

14 hours ago

NASA Focusses in on Artemis III Landing Sites.

It was 1969 that humans first set foot on the Moon. Back then, the Apollo…

15 hours ago

The Connection Between Black Holes and Dark Energy is Getting Stronger

The discovery of the accelerated expansion of the Universe has often been attributed to the…

17 hours ago

Will Advanced Civilizations Build Habitable Planets or Dyson Spheres

Freeman Dyson proposed that advanced civilizations might eventually harvest all the energy coming from their…

20 hours ago