According to a new study by international experts, simultaneous ground and space observations of a floating planet newly discovered have made it possible to directly measure its mass and its distance from the Earth. Peking University (China), the Korea Institute of Astronomy and Space Sciences (South Korea) and the University of Warsaw (Poland) are involved in this discovery.
The results, published in ‘Science‘, offer insights into the diverse and dynamic ways in which planets can be launched into interstellar space. Although the studies carried out to date Only a handful of these floating planets have been revealeddetections are expected to increase in the coming years, notably with NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope campaign, scheduled to launch in 2027.
Planets are generally found attached to one or more stars; However, It is becoming increasingly clear that some people are wandering the galaxy alone. These objects, called floating or wandering planets, have no known stellar companions. And because they don’t emit much light, they only reveal themselves through their subtle gravitational effects, a phenomenon called microlensing.
A topic with a lot to discover
One of the main limitations of this discovery method is that it cannot determine the distance to these planets, making it difficult to independently measure their masses. Therefore, Much of this elusive population of solitary worlds remains speculative.. In this paper, researchers report the discovery of a new floating planet detected by an ephemeral microlensing event.
However, unlike previous detections, they observed this microlensing event simultaneously from Earth and space, using multiple ground-based surveys in conjunction with the Gaia Space Telescope.
Small differences in the timing of light arriving at these distant observation points allowed the parallax of the microlenses to be measured, which, combined with finite-source point lens modeling, allowed the authors determine the mass and location of the planet. It has about 22% the mass of Jupiter and It is located about 3,000 parsecs from the center of the Milky Way.
Because this planet’s mass is comparable to that of Saturn, researchers say it likely formed within a planetary system, rather than in isolation as a small star or brown dwarf. These low-mass rogue planets are thought to be born around stars and then ejected of its orbital limits due to gravitational disturbances, such as interactions with neighboring planets or unstable stellar companions.
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