Oct 122013
 

The galaxy, it seems, is lousy with planets. Within my lifetime the sum total of known planets has gone from nine  to now about one thousand, an expansion of mankinds understanding of the universe not seen since stars were recognized as actual suns. A newly discovered exoplanet, PSO J318.5-22, is in some ways fairly mundane… a gas giant about six times as massive as Jupiter (large gas giants make up a large fraction of the so-far discovered exoplanets for the simple fact that bigger worlds are easier to detect). It has an interesting feature though… it has no star. Like Bronson Alpha from “When Worlds Collide” PSO J318.5-22 is simply floating through interstellar space without a star to warm it. As a result, it’s really cold.

Lonely Alien Planet Discovered Without a Parent Star

The Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Maui, Hawaii, detected the faint heat emitted by the planet. This is a fairly impressive feat given that the planet is almost certainly cryogenically cold… and 80 lightyears away.

Also: a useful website, the Extrasolar Planet Encyclopedia. As of this writing, the catalog lists 998 planets.

 Posted by at 12:17 am