Astronomers Spot New Planet
October 10, 2013 by staff
Astronomers Spot New Planet, Eighty light-years from Earth, there’s a world that’s just six times more massive than Jupiter, floating all alone without a sun to keep it warm, astronomers reported Wednesday.
Such free-floaters have been reported before, but in the past, it hasn’t always been clear whether these were orphaned planets or failed stars. This time, the scientists say they’re sure it’s a planet.
“We have never before seen an object free-floating in space that that looks like this,” team leader Michael Liu of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa said in a news release. “It has all the characteristics of young planets found around other stars, but it is drifting out there all alone. I had often wondered if such solitary objects exist, and now we know they do.”
The heat signature of the world, known as PSO J318.5-22, was identified by the Pan-STARRS 1 wide-field survey telescope on Haleakala, on the Hawaiian island of Maui. The light coming from the object is about 100 billion times fainter in optical wavelengths than the planet Venus. Most of its energy is emitted in infrared wavelengths.
In a report being published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, Liu and his colleagues said the object has properties similar to those of gas-giant planets found orbiting young stars.
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