Thursday, October 10, 2013

A strange lonely planet found without a star

http://www.astronomy.com/news/2013/10/a-strange-lonely-planet-found-without-a-star

October 10, 2013 - Astronomy.com
An international team of astronomers has discovered an exotic young planet that is not orbiting a star. This free-floating planet, PSO J318.5-22, is just 80 light-years away from Earth and has a mass only six times that of Jupiter. The planet formed a mere 12 million years ago — a newborn in planet lifetimes.
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The team followed up the PS1 discovery with 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 showed that PSO J318.5-22 was not a brown dwarf, based on signatures in its infrared light that are best explained by it being young and low-mass.
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