# @planetary_pan on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/CYjwJLADhvJ
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/33110407-planetary-pan-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/804a8be15f.jpg
- **Posted:** 2022-01-10T17:53:04.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Beth Johnson (@planetarypan) — https://gondola.cc/planetarypan

## Caption

FULL STORY: https://buff.ly/3JTGekW⠀
Free-floating Planets Abound in Milky Way ⠀
⠀
This story was actually released right as we went on hiatus for the holidays, but I have been wanting to write about it ever since. In a paper published in Nature and led by Núria Miret-Roig, researchers detail the discovery of at least seventy free-floating planets in a region of the Milky Way known as the Upper Scorpius OB stellar association. And there could be as many as 170 planets hidden within the twenty years of observations the team analyzed.⠀
⠀
Free-floating planets are those planets that are not currently orbiting a star. We used to call them rogue planets, as they had gone rogue from their stellar system of origin, but since we don’t know how true that particular description is, the term was changed to ‘free-floating’. Of course, since these planets are not orbiting a star, they are also not reflecting or blocking a star’s light, nor are they gravitationally influencing a star’s orbit. And dark, cold objects are difficult to detect.⠀
⠀
In the past, detecting free-floating planets involved microlensing, using the chance alignment of an exoplanet and a background star and detecting the gravitational distortion that bends the light around the planet. This project, however, sought out free-floating planets that were actually still hot enough to produce light in visible and infrared light that was detectable by very sensitive cameras on large telescopes, including the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, and the Subaru Telescope. The Dark Energy Camera was one of the instruments involved. Per the press release: "Miret-Roig’s team used the 80,000 observations to measure the light of all the members of the association across a wide range of optical and near-infrared wavelengths and combined them with measurements of how they appear to move across the sky."⠀
⠀
IMAGE: An artist’s impression of a free-floating planet. CREDIT: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva⠀
⠀
#planetaryscience #exoplanet #rogueplanet #freefloatingplanet #space #science #astrophysics

## Stats

- **Views:** 0
- **Likes:** 3
- **Shares:** 0
- **Comments:** 0

## Tags

science, space, rogueplanet, astrophysics, exoplanet, planetaryscience, freefloatingplanet

---
Copyright (c) Gondola