Previously, astronomers discovered free-floating planets with microlensing surveys. Using observations and archival data from telescopes around the world and in orbit, astronomers have discovered at least 70 new free-floating planets – planets that wander through space without a parent star – in a nearby region of the Milky Way known as the Upper Scorpius OB stellar association. | Artist’s impression of a free-floating or rogue planet. Amateur astronomers might be familiar with this region of sky because it contains favorite targets for astrophotographers, including the colorful region around Rho Ophiuchi plus dark nebulae such as the Pipe Nebula, Barnard 68 and the Coalsack. This region of sky, the Upper Scorpius OB association, lies 420 light-years away from Earth. Núria Miret-Roig and Hervé Bouy at the University of Bordeaux in France took a census of all the stars, brown dwarfs and rogue planets greater than four Jupiter masses in the Upper Scorpius region. They sifted through 80,000 wide-field images taken over 20 years. The team of astronomers used observations and archival data from telescopes around the world and in space to make their discoveries. EarthSky lunar calendars now available! Going fast! Location of the rogue planets Love the moon? See its phase for every day in 2022. The peer-reviewed journal Nature Astronomy published the rogue planet discovery on December 22, 2021. These newly found free-floating planets nearly double the total number of rogue planets already known. This mass of unattached planets, each approximately the size of Jupiter, lies in a region of the Milky Way known as the Upper Scorpius OB stellar association. Astronomers announced on December 22, 2021, that they’ve found somewhere between 70 and 170 rogue, or free-floating, planets that is, planets not currently in orbit around a star.
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