Tropes

popsci_2013 00120.txt

#Planet Without A Star Found â##We have seen never before 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 aloneâ#stated team leader Michael Liu who is with the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. â ##I had wondered often if such solitary objects exist and now we know they do. â#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 â##failed stars. â#PSO J318. 5-22â#s ultrared color stood apart from the other objects in the survey astronomers said. The telescope 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 This article was republished with permission from Universe Today o

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