Astronomers Discover Lonely Planet While Studying Brown Dwarfs

Astronomers have found a new planet, about 80 light years from earth, which is drifting alone in the space, devoid of any parent star. The lonely planet named PSO J318.5-22 is 12 million years old and has a mass that's six times greater than Jupiter.

"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," said Dr. Michael Liu of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, lead author of the study. "I had often wondered if such solitary objects exist, and now we know they do."

Researchers used the Pan-STARRS 1 (PS1) wide-field survey telescope on Haleakala, Maui., to find the planet. Additional observation by other telescopes confirmed its existence.

The team confirmed that they had indeed found a lonely planet and not another brown dwarf by using data from multiple telescopes on the summit of Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii. Infrared spectra taken with the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility and the Gemini North Telescope also showed that the planet was floating around in the space, according to a new release.

PSO J318.5-22 is one of the lowest-mass, lonely celestial objects to be directly imaged. Researchers found the planet accidentally when they were trying to study failed stars or brown dwarfs.

These brown dwarfs are very cold by star-standards (some only as hot as a regular kitchen oven). The scientists analyze data from the PS1 to locate them.  The PS1 scans the sky every day, collecting a huge amount of data. The telescope is so sensitive that it can detect even the faintest heat signature of a brown dwarf.

The total data collected by PS1 is 4,000 Terabytes, which is equivalent to the sum of all movies, songs, books ever released.

The study is published in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.