Two views of a rogue planet

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Source: Science Magazine

Original: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aed5209?af=R...

Published: 2026-01-01T07:00:11Z

A scientific paper describes two views of a free-floating planet with a mass similar to Saturn, discovered through the gravitational microlensing phenomenon KMT-2024-BLG-0792/OGLE-2024-BLG-0516[3][2]. Observations from ground-based telescopes and the Gaia Space Telescope have made it possible to simultaneously measure the mass and distance of the planet, overcoming the degeneracy between these parameters[3][2]. This planet has no known star and probably formed around a star, but was ejected by dynamical interactions[3][2]. In another case, the young rogue planet Cha 1107-7626 in the constellation Chamaeleon, with a mass 5 to 10 times that of Jupiter, experienced record growth with an accretion rate of six billion tons per second in August, eight times more than before[1]. The planet is surrounded by a disk of dust and gas from which material is accreting[1]. These observations provide a glimpse into the turbulent infancy of free-floating planetary objects[1][3].