Astronomers uncover largest group of rogue planets yet

Rogue planets have been known about for a while now but few have actually been detected because they don't orbit a Star so don't reflect light but a team of astronomers using data from several European Southern Observatory say they have detected at least 70 of them in our Galaxy.

"We did not know how many to expect and are excited to have found so many," says Núria Miret-Roig, an astronomer at the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Bordeaux, France and the University of Vienna, Austria, and the first author of the new study published today in Nature Astronomy.

Rogue planets, lurking far away from any star illuminating them, would normally be impossible to image. However, Miret-Roig and her team took advantage of the fact that, in the few million years after their formation, these planets are still hot enough to glow, making them directly detectable by sensitive cameras on large telescopes. They found at least 70 new rogue planets with masses comparable to Jupiter's in a star-forming region close to our Sun, in the Upper Scorpius and Ophiuchus constellations.

To spot so many rogue planets, the team used data spanning about 20 years from a number of telescopes on the ground and in space. "We measured the tiny motions, the colours and luminosities of tens of millions of sources in a large area of the sky," explains Miret-Roig. "These measurements allowed us to securely identify the faintest objects in this region, the rogue planets."
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Not saying one is heading our way but to find so many hint's that there are likely many more lurking around out there , imagine a Jupiter sizes rogue planet heading for us.

a reply to: gortex

Not saying one is heading our way but to find so many hint's that there are likely many more lurking around out there , imagine a Jupiter sizes rogue planet heading for us.

Eeeep! So, is this basically saying planet X could actually be real?

a reply to: Chance321

Planet X could be real but it's on a long orbit of the Sun but I guess it could have come in from outside and got caught in that orbit so maybe.

Going to be a quick death if one of those hits us.. That is, if they do not spot it a year before it hits and tell us about it

Dude. If Jupiter was going to hit Earth there is zilch we could do about it, regardless of the forewarning.

a reply to: Spacespider

I'm rogue too, I just got daughters, no suns at all.

Yup I’m pretty certain these are planet sized Death Stars coming to destroy earth.

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: Chance321

Planet X could be real but it's on a long orbit of the Sun but I guess it could have come in from outside and got caught in that orbit so maybe.

To me it seems if there is a Planet X or even more trapped by Sol, then it has to be an eccentric orbit. Possible at or near 90 degrees from the orbital plane of our solar system. It could still be on the same plane as you point in a real long orbit. I am suspecting a different angle. Perhaps one that would make it harder to pick up inbound if it was heading here from certain angles.

a reply to: gortex

imagine a Jupiter sizes rogue planet heading for us.

" Bug on a windshield " comes to mind.

a reply to: gortex

Seems like there's something new out there popping up.