Rogue planet loose in the universe

15 November, 2012

There is a rogue planet in our vast universe and astronomers are trying to find its nature. Also known as homeless planets, these celestial bodies do not attach themselves to any host star.

APPARENTLY IN the universe there are good planets and there are 'rogue' planets as well, and one such rogue planets has been sighted 100 light years away by astronomers. The planet in the universe is moving on its own accord without a star to orbit.

As was reported by the BBC, these planets are common but no studies have been performed on them. These planets are either formed by planets bonding with stars or they are formed like stars, but they never reach a star's full body mass. In each of the ways the resulting stars formed are free of its host star's gravity. Thus this marks them as rogue or different as they are not found through the effects that they have on their host star's light and pinpointing them is difficult for the astronomers.

The planet that is named CFBDSIR2149-0403, would appear online in astronomy and astrophysics. In order to find this planet, the astronomers took on a search party using Canada France Hawaii Telescope on Hawaii's Mauna Kea and the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. The co-author of the study Etienne Artigau of the University of Montreal talking about the planet, said, “This object was discovered during a scan that covered the equivalent of 1,000 times the [area] of the full moon.”

The study also showed that the planet was moving along with a similarly itinerant group of celestial objects, called the "AB Doradus moving group" - a collection of about 30 stars. Due to this, the astronomers were able to determine the age of the homeless planet and would be able to make further investigations about the planet's mass and temperature. They believe that the planet has a mass that is four and seven times that of Jupiter and has a temperature of 400C.