Invisible rogue planets without stars? NASA’s new space telescope could find hundreds of them
CNNCNN — NASA is on the hunt for rogue planets. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, NASA’s upcoming observatory expected to launch in the mid-2020s, could reveal a multitude of rogue planets that don’t orbit stars in our Milky Way galaxy, according to new research. Roman is a game-changer for rogue planet searches.” Given the fact that rogue planets don’t emit light like stars, or even enough heat to be visible in infrared light, these otherwise invisible worlds will be visible through the Roman Telescope’s observations of microlensing events. Recent research using estimates from ground-based telescopes suggests that the Roman Telescope could find hundreds of rogue planets, helping scientists understand how common they are in the Milky Way. “The universe could be teeming with rogue planets and we wouldn’t even know it,” said Scott Gaudi, study coauthor and a professor of astronomy at The Ohio State University, in a statement.
History of this topic
Starless and forever alone: more 'rogue' planets discovered
The Hindu
Astronomers discover 70 ‘rogue planets’ the size of Jupiter in our galaxy
The Independent
World's Smallest Rogue Planet Size of Our Earth Discovered Floating in the Milky Way
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Planets far beyond our galaxy discovered for the first time by astrophysicists
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Are orphan planets more common than we thought?
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