Spotted: Cha 1107-7626, young rogue planet larger than Jupiter
Astronomers have claimed to have spotted Cha 1107-7626, a young rogue planet, which is 5 to 10 times more massive than Jupiter, our solar system's largest planet
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Astronomers have claimed to have spotted Cha 1107-7626, a young rogue planet, which is 5 to 10 times more massive than Jupiter, our solar system's largest planet.
Rogue planets, also called free-floating planetary-mass objects, typically have a mass a few times greater than Jupiter, existing as isolated systems freely floating in space and not gravitationally bound to a host star.
The researchers observed Cha 1107-7626 using the European Southern Observatory's Chile-based Very Large Telescope, news agency Reuters reported.
Cha 1107-7626 location
The Cha 1107-7626 is located in our Milky Way galaxy about 620 light-years from Earth in the constellation Chamaeleon.
It was observed during a strong burst of growth at the center of a disk of gas and dust, forming much like a young star, as it gobbled up its surrounding material at a rate never previously seen in such an object.
At its peak, during August of this year, it was consuming this material at a rate of six billion tons per second, about eight times faster than just a few months earlier.
“The outburst we detected is extraordinary, being similar to some of the most intense phases of growth seen in young stars.
“It reveals that the same physical processes driving star formation can also occur on a planetary scale”, said astronomer Víctor Almendros-Abad of the INAF Astronomical Observatory of Palermo in Italy, lead author of the study published this month in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
“This object is about one to two million years old. This is very young for astronomical standards,” Almendros-Abad said, adding the rogue planet appears to be in its final stages of formation and is not expected to gain much more mass.
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