There was a lonely planet without a star - Money.pl

id=”inContext_disabled”> 2013-10-11 8:40

id=”inContext_disabled”> Graphics planet PSO J318.5-22 [Photo: MPIA / V. Ch. Quetz]

Planet freely moving in space, which is not circling any star, an international team of astronomers has discovered. The object is distant from us only 80 light years – gave the Institute of Astronomy, University of Hawaii.

extrasolar planet, astronomers already know hundreds, but there are still discovering objects with unusual characteristics. These may include the planet designated as PSO J318.5-22, discovered by a team headed by Michael Liu (Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii at Manoa).

The researchers used a sky survey telescope Pan-STARRS1 (PS1) to identify the weak object. Then performed observations with larger telescopes, such as the IRTF, UKIRT, CFHT 3.6-meter, or 8-meter Gemini. It turned out that the object has features similar to the giant gaseous planets discovered around other stars. The weight of PSO J318.5-22 was determined as six times greater than the mass of Jupiter.

weight puts an object in the category of planets, but PSO J318.5-22 is alone without its star. Such a category of objects can be determined freely moving planets.

With a two-year measurements astrometrycznym able to determine the distance from an unusual planet, it amounts to 80 years of light. With the knowledge of the distance to the planet, astronomers can determine another important value – the absolute magnitude, the actual brightness of the object (not just apparent, depending on the distance from which we look at the subject.)

Another feature, which is found in the case of PSO J318.5-22 based on its analysis of movement in space, is to follow a moving planet together with a group of young stars called Beta Pictoris, which formed 12 million years ago. This means that the planet is probably the same age.

results will be published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters .